News

On Wednesday 14th of February, our community celebrated the
annual "I love Free Software Day". A day to declare love to the communities
most important to you as well as saying "Thank You" to the Free Software
projects surrounding us every single day. The Free Software Foundation Europe
also wants to thank everyone who cheered and contributed to make this day as
special as it could be.

The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) publishes the results of the Ask Your Candidates campaign that FSFE Italy did run for the Italian election. Multiple questions have been sent to the major political parties that run for office in the national elections on March 4. We received positive statements by "Movimento 5 Stelle", "Liberi e Uguali", "Partito Democratico" and "Potere al Popolo". Unfortunately, there have been no answers by "+Europa", "Forza Italia", "Fratelli d'Italia" and "Lega Nord".

In light of the upcoming elections in Italy on March 4th, the FSFE country team Italy sent out multiple questions to the participating parties to challenge them on their position about Free Software in public administration and education. We will publish and analyse their answers once we receive them.

Following the well-established tradition
of gathering active Free Software groups before FOSDEM kicks off, the
FSFE once again partnered up with OpenForum Europe
for the third edition of European Free Software Policy Meeting in Brussels,
the heart of European decision-making.

The Free Software Foundation Europe calls on everyone to say "thank you" to all contributors to Free Software on 14 February. Last year the annual I Love Free Software Day has been committed with offline activism to tell people outside of our filter bubble about the importance of Free Software. This Wednesday, we will go back to our roots and focus on why this day has been invented in the first place: to celebrate the Free Software community.

The REUSE Initiative has received an updated set of practices that simplify
the process of declaring copyright and licence information. To help
facilitate developers with updating their projects, the FSFE has also
published a tool that verifies whether a project is compliant.

For more than two years the Free Software
Foundation Europe has worked on the issue of Radio Lockdown introduced by a
European directive which may hinder users to load software on their
radio devices like mobile phones, laptops and routers. We have informed
the public and talked to decision makers to fix critical points of the
directive. There is still much to do to protect freedom and IT security
in our radio devices. Read about the latest proceedings and the next
steps.

The yearly report of the Free Software Foundation Europe gives you a breakdown
in one document of important things we have done and achieved during the last 12
months. Read on to find out about our activities, the campaigns we have run, the
events we have visited or organised, the groups we have helped, and what
resources we counted on to do it.

The Dutch Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations
released the source code and documentation of Basisregistratie Personen (BRP), a
100M€ IT system that registers information about inhabitants within the
Netherlands. This comes as a great success for Public Code, and the FSFE
applauds the Dutch government's shift to Free Software.

A new copyright proposal is currently discussed by the EU co-legislators. Part of this proposal is Article 13 which can hamper our ability to collaborate with each other online as it imposes new monitoring obligations and installation of arbitrary upload filters on every code hosting and sharing provider. The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) today raises its voice to save code sharing and joins 80 other organisations in an open letter towards the EU Council.

Earlier this year, after a public consultation, we took the decision to
change the name of our supporter program, the Fellowship of the FSFE,
and talk about our supporters by their true name: Supporters. This
is an exciting change for us, as it brings our Supporters much closer
to the organisation, by making them an integral part of the FSFE. Today,
with the change almost complete, we're also taking the opportunity to
say goodbye to the Fellowship Smartcard, which has been a part of
FSFE life for more than ten years.

FSFE is a charity dedicated to empowering users to control technology.
We are working to build freedom in digital society. We operate in a lively
environment with volunteers from many countries. We are looking for
students who can join our team in Berlin for three months or more as a
mandatory part of their studies or before graduation.

FSFE is a charity dedicated to keeping the power over technology in your hands. We are working to build freedom in a digital society and operate in a lively environment with volunteers from many countries. We are looking for an assistance supporting the office manager with for instance:

On 6 October, 32 European Ministers in charge of eGovernment
policy signed the Tallinn Declaration on eGovernment that calls for more
collaboration, interoperable solutions, and sharing of good practices
throughout public administrations and across borders. Amongst other things,
the EU ministers recognised the need to make more use of Free Software
solutions and Open Standards when (re)building governmental digital
systems with EU funds.

The members of the Free Software Foundation Europe held their General Assembly on October 15 in Edinburgh, Scotland. The annual meeting is held to discuss strategies for the upcoming year and set the course for the overall direction of the organisation. Amongst other things an overall Code of Conduct for the FSFE was adopted, Patrick Ohnewein was elected as the new Financial Officer, and six new members joined the association.

From December 27 to 30, the 34th Chaos Communication Congress will be held in Leipzig. As in recent years, the FSFE is happy to host an assembly that includes an information booth and a meeting point for all Free Software enthusiasts and our friends to come together. We offer a stage and look for interesting self-organised sessions for our community. This is the corresponding call for participation.

The FSFE, together with Open Forum Europe, asks the
EU policymakers to Save Code Share in the current on-going EU Copyright review.
Today we ask you to support our newest campaign Save Code Share
by signing an Open Letter
addressed to the EU policymakers.In this letter we request EU legislators
to preserve the ability to collaboratively build software online in current
EU Copyright Directive proposal.

Digital services offered and used by public
administrations are the critical infrastructure of 21st-century
democratic nations. To establish trustworthy systems, government
agencies must ensure they have full control over systems at the core
of our digital infrastructure. This is rarely the case today due to
restrictive software licences.

Our world is constantly changing, as are people's thoughts and perceptions. Since its founding in 2001, individuals engaged in the FSFE, from coordinators and volunteers to full-time employees, have come to develop their understanding of what FSFE is and what our shared values are. Sometimes the views expressed by individuals have been similar to one another, sometimes they have diverged.

The FSFE and Open Forum Europe teamed up for an initiative
to show the implications of the proposed EU copyright reform for the
Free Software development ecosystem: Save Code Share.
As part of this initiative, today we release our White Paper which
highlights the ways in which the proposed Article 13 could unintentionally
harm the communities and the businesses built around Free Software.

The FSFE launches today its best practises in licensing for Free and Open Source Software project. Targeted at developers and companies, these best practices show you how to make it clear to others what license your software is being distributed under, in a way which both computers and humans can understand.

Although digital issues are becoming increasingly important, general election coverage often miss them out. That is why the "Koalition Freies Wissen" ("Free Knowledge Coalition") created the "Digital-O-Mat", an online tool for voter information for the German federal election of 2017. The FSFE asked the participating parties about their positions on Free Software. CDU/CSU, SPD and FDP avoid clear statements and thus confirm the status quo, the Greens and the Left in contrast present themselves as supporters of Free Software.

FSFE is a charity dedicated to keeping the power over technology in your
hands. We are working to build freedom in a digital society and operate
in a lively environment with volunteers from many countries. We are
looking for an intern to join our remote team for three to six months,
working with us on a project which seek to prepare the organisation
for the next 15 years of work.

Check out our brand-new merchandise item for little Free Software supporters in our online shop: 100% organic and fair trade bibs. The slogan "I am a fork" is stitched onto the bib so that it will remain on the bib even after many wash cycles.

The FSFE submitted its comments for the upcoming
Tallinn Declaration for e-government drafted by the Estonian presidency
of the Council of the EU. Therein the FSFE asks the current Estonian
presidency to promote greater inclusion of Free Software in delivering
truly inclusive, trustworthy and interoperable digital services to all
citizens and businesses across the EU. The Tallinn Declaration will be
signed by EU ministers in October 2017, expressing member states' joint
vision for e-government and political commitment to follow the goals set.
The proposal for Tallinn declaration is open for public comments until 14 July.
The FSFE is asking organisations, companies, and individuals to let EU
ministers know how Free Software is important for transparent and accountable
e-government.

In April, the FSFE organised its annual
Free
Software Legal and Licensing Workshop (LLW): a meeting point for
legal experts from all over the world to discuss issues and best practices
surrounding Free Software licences. This year marks the 10th anniversary
of the LLW which was celebrated with the record number of participants:
120 top legal experts and technologists came all the way down to Barcelona
(Spain) to spend 3 full days discussing legal challenges around Free Software.

Sharing one's knowledge is a core principle in the Free Software
society, collaboration is another. From today, the FSFE provides its supporters and registered volunteers a
platform to create and manage Git repositories with a comfortable user
interface: git.fsfe.org.

The revised "new"
European Interoperability Framework (EIF),
adopted by the European Commission on 23 March 2017, gives specific guidance
on how to set up interoperable digital public services, and offers public
administrations concrete recommendations on how to improve interoperability
of their e-services.

… Daniel Pocock! The election period for this year's Fellowship GA seat has ended on April 24, 2017. FSFE is proud to have such an interested and active community to have had seven outstanding candidates who were running for office this time. Now, Daniel Pocock is happy to take over the GA's Fellowship seat from former representative Nicolas Dietrich.

North Rhine-Westphalia is Germany's most populated state which is having its next general elections on May 14, 2017. For this election, a "coalition of Free knowledge" developed for the first time a "Digital-o-Mat". The "Digital-o-Mat" is a tool to help those voters who are concerned about digital rights and freedoms, to decide about which party to vote for. Therefor, eight questions guide any user to choose his own preferences on important topics about the digital society - like questions about the use of Free Software, Open Data or Open Educational Resources. After filling them out, a user will see which party matches best with his own preferences and he can additionally browse detailed explanations on the party's positions.

According to our constitution, two seats in the General Assembly are reserved for elected representatives of our Fellows. They serve two-year terms and one seat is up for re-election every year. The current representatives are Nicolas Dietrich and Mirko Boehm; Nicolas's term is coming to an end and his seat will be up for re-election this April.

The election period runs from April 10 to April 24, 2017, with eight candidates eligible for election. The list of candidates, along with their manifestos and background, can be found at the election wiki page.

In addition, a moderated hustings will be held on March 30, 5:30 PM UTC to 7:30 PM UTC in #fsfe at irc.freenode.net. Detailed schedule and instructions may be found at the election wiki page.

All orderly Fellows eligible to vote will also receive detailed voting instructions by e-mail in due course.

Today the civil society "working group OGP (Open
Government Partnership) Germany" (Arbeitskreis OGP Deutschland) published its
input for a German OGP action plan. The goal of the Open Government actions
is to increase transparency, citizen friendlyness, reporting, and
effectiveness of governments and administrations. The input, which was
already handed over to the German Government on 20 March, consists of 30 Open
Government topics, including a section about Free Software.

On Tuesday 14th of February, the "I Love Free
Software" day was celebrated for its eighth consecutive year, in what
can now be called a tradition. This day has become a special day for
people all around the world to declare their love and affection not
only to their partner but also to the whole Free Software
community.

Today FSFE Netherlands, NLnet, ISPConnect, and Open
Source & Overheid launch Freedomvote.nl to help inform voters in
the upcoming Dutch general election, which is held on 15 March 2017.
Freedomvote.nl provides guidance to voters on the topic of digital freedom,
based on eight questions.

On 15 February 2017, the city council of Munich, Germany convened
to discuss the future of their LiMux project. In its public
session, the plenary voted to have the city administration develop
a strategy to unify client-side IT architecture, building atop a
yet-to-be-developed "Windows-Basis-Client". A translation of the
complete decision is included further down.

The European Commission Directorate-General for Research
and Innovation responds to
a Freedom of Information (FOI) request about the use, development and
release of software under Horizon 2020 - submitted by the FSFE on
January 9, 2017.

In celebration of the "I love Free Software" day on
February 14, the Berlin Reichtag has been illuminated with the message
"Give Free Software A Chance" last weekend. On numerous buildings and
symbolic places in Berlin other messages have been projected. "Build
Free Software - Not Walls" could have been read on the Berlin Wall, and
the Federal Ministry of Finances has been decorated by the slogan
"Public Money, Public Code". Thereby, activists draw attention to the
importance of larger appreciation of Free Software.

Building on the experience from last year's successful
pre-FOSDEM meeting, the Free
Software Foundation Europe and OpenForum Europe recently
continued the tradition of bringing together active Free Software groups
a day before the FOSDEM event, in order to discuss public policy related
actions at both the EU and the national levels. This year, the meeting
focused on encouraging exchanges of views between individual citizens
and decision-makers, by providing practical first-hand information on topics
relating to Free Software in public policy.

It's time to say "thank you" on 14th of February, the "I love Free
Software" Day 2017. The Free Software Foundation Europe asks all Free
Software users to use the traditional day of love to think of the
hardworking people contributing to the Free Software we all depend on.
As every year there are many ways for people to participate in this
campaign.

The Chaos Communication Congress is Germany’s biggest annual meetup of hackers and political activists. This year has been the 33rd edition ("33C3") and FSFE has been present with an assembly, a booth and 21 sessions about Free Software. Read a visual report of our activities along some pictures by Erik Albers.

FSFE is a charity dedicated to empowering users to control technology.
We are working to build freedom in digital society. We operate in a lively
environment with volunteers from many countries. We are looking for
students who can join our team in Berlin for three months as a mandatory
part of their studies or before graduation.

The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) files
Freedom
of Information (FOI) request to the European Commission (EC) Directorate-General
for Research and Innovation, asking for information related to the use,
development and release of software under Horizon 2020, the biggest
EU research funding programme.

It has been a busy year for the FSFE. Upholding the principles of
Free Software and protecting citizens' from being exploited
are ongoing challenges we tackled from a variety of angles.
We (and by "we", we mean the staff and volunteers at the FSFE) pored
over hundreds of pages of policies and legislations, looking for loopholes
through which Free Software could be attacked.

The Free Software Foundation Europe calls for Free
Software and Open Standards to be considered as a vital part of Open
Science for all publicly-funded research in Europe. You can help us by
sharing our position paper. Read more about the position paper and how
you can promote Free Software in science.

From September 2nd to 4th, the FSFE organised its first ever summit to bring together our pan-European community and Fellows for a whole weekend and to discuss contemporary and important issues regarding software freedom. On this occasion we also held our official party to celebrate 15 years of FSFE. Read our report including some pictures of the event and find a summary with all talks that have been held with links to our video-recordings.

This month the FSFE newsletter comes for the first time with a call to raise our funds and progress in Russia to further Free Software on political level. Also read about our various activities or participate in our discussion about "Free Software business". As in every newsletter, you also find our out-of-the-community section with interesting news from our community and some good Free Software news from around the world.

This year, FSFE celebrated its 15th birthday. 15 years of empowering users, supporting communities and pushing for better legislation. 15 years to see that all activities, even if considered small at the time, can become big when we work together. 15 years to see that all activities, even if considered impossible at the time, can succeed when we stand together. Together, we sometimes succeeded even against the heaviest lobbying of large interest groups. 15 years to know that all of this would not have been possible without the continuous support of our community, contributing thousands of hours of their work time and backing us financially. Help us now to grow bigger and make a difference in 2017.

Since the start of the FSFE 15 years ago, the people involved were certain that companies are a crucial part to reach our goal of software freedom. For many years we have explained to companies – IT as well as non-IT – what benefits they have from Free Software. We encourage individuals and companies to pay for Free Software, as much as we encourage companies to use Free Software in their offers. While more people demanded Free Software, we also saw more companies claiming something is Free Software or Open Source Software although it is not.

This month the FSFE newsletter comes with a public consultation on our Fellowship brand. Read the background and do not miss your chance to participate. Also read about the take-over of FSFE's Vice-presidency by Heiki Löhmus and the ongoing revision of the European Interoperability Framework. As in every newsletter, you also find our out-of-the-community as well as a what-we-have-done section with some good Free Software news and highlights of our press coverage.

Last weekend, the FSFE visited Oberhausen to participate in
OpenRheinRuhr, a well-known Free Software event in north-western
Germany. We had a strong booth team, gave talks, and enjoyed
talking to tons of like-minded people about politics, technology
and other stuff. In this blog post you will learn about some
highlights of the weekend and what coat hangers have to do with
flat irons.

Alessandro Rubini has stepped down as Vice-president of the FSFE. Alessandro, an electronic engineer with Ph. D. in a computer science, brought invaluable insight to the internal discussions within the FSFE and has worked tirelessly to push the Free Software envelope in Italy and the rest of Europe.

From December 27 to 30, the FSFE will host an assembly during the 33rd Chaos Communication Congress (33C3) including an information booth, self-organised sessions and a meeting point for all friends of Free Software to come together, share or simply relax. We are looking forward to organise sessions in the name of our assembly and we will book proper rooms or offer our assembly itself. Sessions can be inspiring talks, hands-on workshops, community/developer/strategy meetings or any other public, informative or collaborative activity.

Topics can be anything that is about or related to Free Software. We welcome technical sessions but we also encourage to give non-technical talks that address philosophical, economical or other aspects of/about Free Software. We also like sessions about related subjects that have a clear connection to Free Software for example privacy, data protection, sustainability and similar topics. Finally, we welcome all backgrounds – from your private project to global community projects. If you are interested, read more about our call for participation.

FSFE is a charity dedicated to empowering users to control technology.
We are working to build freedom in digital society. We operate in a lively
environment with volunteers from many countries. We are looking for a
technical intern to join our team for three months, taking part in the
work to rewrite and implement a new account management system.

On 14 September the European Commission (EC) published
its long-awaited proposal
for a Directive on copyright in the Digital Single Market. While we
welcome the proposal to introduce a mandatory exception for 'text
and data mining' (TDM) in the field of scientific research, we are concerned
about the inclusion of a far-reaching "technical safeguards" clause granted
to rightholders in order to limit the newly established exception.

In the afternoon of Saturday 6 August, our friend and
active Fellow Elias Diem passed away. He was on his way back home from a hiking
trip with a friend in the Swiss alps. He slipped and fell about 150 meters. His
friend tried to rescue him, but it was too late. He died of a heavy head injury
at the age of 39.

Free Software advocates from all over Europe will be meeting in Berlin
from the 2nd to the 4th of September at the FSFE Summit 2016. Apart from
working on furthering the adoption of Free Software in Europe, we will
also be celebrating the FSFE's 15th anniversary.

Up until now, Internet service providers (ISPs) in
Germany determined the router users had to use to connect to the
Internet. The user had no say in this decision. This changes on August
1. A new law will allow users choose the device that gets installed in
their homes. The FSFE wants to ensure everybody knows about their new
rights and is asking users to report cases in which ISPs try to avoid
the new regulation.

Imagine a European Union that builds its IT infrastructure on Free Software. Imagine European Member States that exchange information in Open Standards and share their software. Imagine municipalities and city councils that benefit from decentralized and collaborative software under free licenses. Imagine no European is any longer forced to use non-Free Software... This is what we are seeking. And although this vision feels like a long road to go, we know that we are taking major steps along it today. To help unlock our full potential on this road, FSFE offers cross-border collaboration and in 2016 its first European summit. Join us and our movement.

The Free Software Foundation Europe protects users,
companies and institutions from technological abuse by promoting the use
of Free Software. Now there is a project that protects the code used in
Free Software itself and promised to preserve it for the future: Inria
presents the Software Heritage initiative.

The European Commission is
asking
for public input with regard to its plans to renew the European
Interoperability Framework (EIF). The EIF aims to promote enhanced
interoperability in the EU public sector. The document, originally intended
as a set of non-binding guidelines for the EU public administration, is
going through its third revision since its initial adoption in 2004. The
FSFE has prepared its comments
for the draft of the revised guidelines.

… Mirko Boehm! The election period for this year's Fellowship
GA seat has ended on April 29, 2016. There was just one candidate running for the Fellowship GA seat this time. The more we are happy that still 18,9% of our Fellows took their chance to support Mirko Boehm in running for the seat.

In 2016, the FSFE is celebrating 15 years of existence. What started as a small group of volunteers has grown into a European wide movement with actively supporting members in more than 20 countries. We dedicate this birthday to our community, to those who made us grow strong in the past 15 years - with the first ever FSFE summit on September 2 – 4, taking place in the Berlin Congress Center, Germany. If you like to be part of it, save the date and take part in the call for participation.

On 19 April, the European Commission published a communication on "ICT
Standardisation Priorities for the Digital Single Market" (hereinafter 'the
Communication'). The Digital
Single Market (DSM) strategy intends to digitise industries with several
legislative and political initiatives, and the Communication is a part of it
covering standardisation. In general, the Free Software Foundation Europe
(FSFE) welcomes the Communication's plausible approach for integrating Free
Software and Open Standards into standardisation
but expresses its concerns about the lack of understanding of necessary
prerequisites to pursue that direction.

23 organisations including the Free Software Foundation
Europe (FSFE) joined up in
proposing measures to EU institutions and EU member states to avoid
negative implications on users' rights and Free Software imposed by the EU
Radio Equipment Directive 2014/53/EU.

From teaching people to use encryption for their e-mail, to changing
the direction of policy on a European level, the Free Software
Foundation Europe worked hard in 2015 to empower users to control
technology. With welcome help from our donors and contributors, we
set out with ambitious goals for the year. We saw a lot of
improvements in how we work, and we ended the year positively with a
lot to look forward to in 2016. Please enjoy this story of (some!) of
our work over the year, and thank you for helping us make the world a
better place!

Sunday 14 February 2016 was a day to declare love for
people we care for. On this day, as a yearly tradition, the Free Software
community celebrates "I love Free Software" day to thank developers behind Free
Software. This year, for the 6th time, FSFE asked everyone to participate and
express their appreciation and gratitude to their favourite Free Software
contributors.

It's time to say "thank you" on 14th of February,
the "I love Free Software" Day 2016.
The Free Software Foundation Europe asks all Free Software users to use
the traditional day of love to think of the hardworking people
contributing to the Free Software we all depend on. As every year there are
many ways for people to participate in this online campaign which has
first been celebrated five years ago.

Traditionally, Brussels is the place to go for Free Software enthusiasts
and developers at the end of January. During FOSDEM,
hundreds of experts talk about their beloved project and discuss the past,
present and future of Open Source. It is a great place for meeting like-minded people.

On 19 January, the European Parliament adopted
its own-initiative report "Towards a Digital Single Market"
in response to the European Commission's Digital Single Market strategy.
FSFE is glad to see that the Parliament took an affirmative attitude
and a bolder stance towards the increased use of Free Software and
its importance to digital single market.

The Free Software Foundation Europe is delighted to hand
over the organisation of the international Document Freedom Day to the Digital
Freedom Foundation. Document Freedom Day is the global campaign for document
liberation and awareness of Open Standards with grassroots events throughout
the world. The Digital Freedom Foundation is best known to organise Software
Freedom Day, the international day to celebrate Free Software.

FSFE provided the European Commission input on setting priorities
in ICT standards and answered to the public consultation on the adoption of a Priority ICT Standards Plan
which has been proposed in the Digital Single Market (DSM) strategy.

Lots of people and companies in our society benefit from
Free Software. The Free Software Foundation Europe is empowering people to
control technology since 2001. To make a difference in our work, we aim at
140.000€ in donations until 31 January, of which we already received
60.000€.

On 29 October 2015, the European Parliament
adopted a report (2015/2635(RSP)), which condemned mass surveillance throughout
Europe. While focusing primarily on legal precedents of data protection,
Parliament proposed new recommendations to improve IT security
by migrating to free software, as well as adding free software as a
mandatory selection criterion in public IT procurement.

The European Commission has set a goal to
make the EU's single market fit for the digital age by adopting
“A Digital Single Market Strategy” which is aimed at bringing down
regulatory barriers between 28 different national markets.
According to the Commission, a true Digital Single Market (DSM)
can be achieved by taking the following actions:

Fellows in Zurich started "Free Computer for Free People", an initiative to offer laptops that run completely on Free Software only. This includes alternative firmware as well as free BIOS. By reusing used hardware, the Zurich Fellows also like to foster a sustainable use of hardware.

Together with 9 other civil and economic
organisations the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) sent a letter
to numerous members of the German Bundestag concerning the compulsory
routers issue at the present Wednesday. The letter is supposed to
highlight the importance of passing the bill for freedom of terminal
devices in telecommunication.

Today is Ada Lovelace Day, a day that aims to raise the profile of women in science, technology, engineering and maths. FSFE happily joins the celebration of Ada Lovelace Day by interviewing Isabel Drost-Fromm - long time FSFE Fellow, member of the Apache Software Foundation and co-founder of Apache Mahout as well as the Berlin Buzzwords conference. Read about Free Software migration, free search engines, Java, Berlin and her advice for your personal contributions.

Today the Free Software Foundation Europe looks back on the Sony
rootkit fiasco from 2005. This page outlines some facts about the
rootkit and how it was handled, as well as some context about what
these kinds of restrictions mean for the notion of computers as
general purpose machines. 31 October 2015 marks the 10 year
anniversary of when the rootkit was discovered, and in preparation
for this day, we ask you all to use this information and spread the
word, not only about the Sony rootkit, but about the dangers of
digital restrictions on users' freedoms everywhere.

On 4 October 1985 Harold Abelson, Robert J. Chassell, Richard M.
Stallman, Garald Jay Sussman, and Leonard H. Tower, Jr. incorporated
the Free Software Foundation, Inc. The application included also the
GNU Emacs General Public License, the GNU Manifesto, a list of software
which was already written (Bison, MIT Schema, Hack, plus a list of
several Unix utility replacements)...

Matthias Kirschner and Alessandro Rubini are FSFE's new
President and Vice President. They were elected last week in Bucharest during
FSFE's General Assembly, while Reinhard Müller was re-elected as Financial
Officer. They will serve FSFE in those positions for the upcoming two
years.

In anticipation of the Swiss national parliament elections (Nationalrat- / Ständeratswahlen) on 18 October 2015, FSFE Switzerland starts the „Freedomvote“ campaign today, in cooperation with the "Swiss Open Systems User Group“ (/ch/open). The campaign offers an online portal that lists those candidates who will run for election, and their opinion towards Internet policy, Free Software, and open data formats.

The router. Despite often being dusty it is one
of the most important devices needed for using the internet or phones.
However: Most users in Germany don’t own this device even though it
is located inside their homes and they pay for it.

FSFE supports the publication of the User
Data Manifesto 2.0, which aims at defining basic rights for
people to control their own data in the internet age. The
manifesto is published today and also supported by GNOME, KDE,
Netzpolitik.org, ownCloud, Spreed, “Terms of Service - Didn’t
Read” and X-Lab.

In April 2015, we announced a change in the relationship between Kern
Sibbald and the FSFE owing to the cancellation of the Fiduciary
License Agreement (FLA) between Kern and the FSFE which previously
made the FSFE a fiduciary for copyrights in the Bacula software.

After some discontinuity, FSFE will start again to interview their sustaining members. This way, we like to show you who we are, where we come from and what we stand for. This month and as the first in our new series, we interviewed Neil McGovern, FSFE from the United Kingdom. Neil has been working in the Open Rights Group and was recently elected as Debian Project Leader (DPL). Read about his role as DPL, his engagement in Free Software as well as on political levels.

Please note that this position is no longer open for
applications.
The Free Software Foundation Europe was
founded in 2001 and has gone through a tremendous growth
since then, both in the number of volunteers and staff, and
also in the complexity of our technical infrastructure and
the number of services we run and offer for both internal and
external use. We're currently looking for a system
administrator and architect that, for a limited time, can
support us in our work to migrate our services to a new
infrastructure.

But all of us depend on the possibility to install or replace programs
that we use every day, to increase our security, privacy or convenience
-- or just because we happen to like using a different program on our
laptop, tablet, phone, router, television, car, or on other devices.

We currently wrap-up the PDFreaders campaign, and we need your help to
measure our success. Started in 2009 FSFE’s goal with the campaign was to
get rid of advertisement for proprietary PDF readers. We focused on the
websites of public administrations, and many people helped us gather contact
details for over 2000 public websites which advertised non-free software.
Many people helped us to contact the public administrations, governments
were made aware of it and published guidelines. Until now we know that 772
of the 2110 bugs were fixed, which is a 36% success rate. But for most
countries we did not check the status for several months now. That’s why we
need your help now to make one final round. We are looking for volunteers
who can help us checking websites in their native language, following the
step-by-step guide in the blog post.

Effective the 6th of March 2015, the FLA between Kern Sibbald and FSFE has been terminated at the request of Kern Sibbald. The FSFE is committed to ensuring to the best of its ability that Bacula.org software remains Free Software, and can only regret that Kern Sibbald in this way chose to terminate the FLA.

Document Freedom Day is the day when we talk about Open Standards around the world. In 2015, all together, we turned this day once more into a global event with 63 local event organisers in 31 countries on 4 continents. Volunteers around the world, accompanied by international organisations as well as politicians and public services joined our demand for document freedom. Read our report to see what happened during Document Freedom Day 2015.

Today is Document Freedom Day, the international
day to celebrate and raise awareness of Open Standards. On this
occasion, we would like to reflect on the importance for public
institutions in general, and for the European Commission in
particular, considering its leadership role, of using Open Standards
in all their digital communication and services.

On March 25 is this year's Document Freedom Day and,
depending on your time zone, it has already started. Document Freedom
Day is the global campaign for document liberation by local groups
throughout the world. So far more than 50 groups registered their events
in over 25 countries ranging from Asia, Europe, Africa, to South and
North America.

… Nicolas Dietrich! The election period for this year's Fellowship
GA seat has ended on March 13, 2015. FSFE is proud to have had three
outstanding candidates that were running for office this time. Now,
Nicolas Dietrich is happy to take over the GA's Fellowship seat from
former representative Heiki "Repentinus" Lõhmus.

Currently, there is uncertainty in Switzerland regarding
the development and release of Free Software by public contractors. The
trigger for this was the development and release of the software OpenJustitia
by the Swiss Federal Supreme Court. The federal council now wants to examine
whether the publication of Free Software by the federal administration can be
explicitly allowed. The Free Software Foundation Europe demands a clarification
so that publicly-financed software can unambiguously be legally released as
Free Software

On Saturday, 14 February 2015, people all over the world
showed Free Software contributors their appreciation. It was the fifth year the
Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) asked people to participate in the “I
Love Free Software” day. This report shows a variety of love declarations that
happened this day, including blog posts, pictures, comics, poems, and an
#ilovefs Android library. The FSFE thanks everybody who motivated Free Software
contributors this year, and ask everybody to mark 14 February in their
calendars for next year's “I love Free Software” day.

Document Freedom Day (#DFD2015) is a global campaign for document liberation, with grassroots events throughout the world taking place on March 25, 2015. Add your voice to this worldwide celebration of Open Standards, and register your DFD event for 2015!

In order to push for a more enlightened policy
approach to managing innovation and knowledge, FSFE has submitted a
response [pdf] to an EU consultation on patents and standards. This is
the latest action in FSFE's ongoing work in promoting Open Standards.

Together with FSFE and other partners, the Bündnis Freie Bildung ("Free Education Alliance") today publishes its position paper about the creation and usage of Open Educational Resources (OER). Therein, the Bündnis demands a consequent publishing of all OER-material under public licences and their availability as Free Software and in Open Standard formats.

Every year on 14th February, the Free Software Foundation Europe
asks all Free Software users to think about the hard-working
people in the Free Software community and to show them their
appreciation individually on this "I love Free Software"-Day.

The European Parliament has approved funding for several projects related to Free Software and privacy. In the EU budget for 2015, which the European Parliament adopted on December 17, the Parliamentarians have allocated up to one million Euro for a project to audit Free Software programs in use at the Commission and the Parliament in order to identify and fix security vulnerabilities.

April, France's leading Free Software advocacy organisation, was founded 18 years ago today.April was set up in December 1996 by students in a Paris university as a not-for-profit group to promote Free Software in computer science research.

We shape tomorrow's world by what we do today. FSFE helps people to
understand how technology affects their rights and freedoms, and
empowers them to determine their own path in the digital world. See
what we achieved in 2014, and where we're going next!

GnuPG is the world's leading privacy tool, with an estimated
base of more than four million active users world-wide, and a thousand
new users each day. It guards emails, files, and programs from
snooping and spying on Windows, Mac, and GNU/Linux. This crucial
program needs your help to keep going in 2015 and beyond.

A study released on Friday says that the European Parliament must adopt Free
Software and Open
Standards in order to fulfil its transparency obligations. The
authors conclude that "the Rules of Procedure of the European
Parliament should whenever possible make Free Software and Open
Standards mandatory for all systems and data used for the work of
Parliament."

Free Software Foundation Europe is a pan-European charity,
established in 2001 to empower users to control technology. To enable the
organisation to intensify its work with the European Commission and to let more
people know about Free Software, the FSFE needs another €190,000 for its work
in 2015. Next year, the FSFE will push harder than ever to weave software
freedom into the fabric of our society.

At a meeting in the European Parliament, FSFE's president Karsten
Gerloff highlighted several ways in which the Parliament could become
more transparent, and make better use of Free Software and Open
Standards.

In a short intervention, he urged the Parliament to finally make its
live streams accessible to Free Software users. He asked the
Parliament's IT administration to enable IMAP access on its mail
servers to allow Free Software users to connect through standard
protocols, and warned the Parliament to avoid lock-in as it progresses
towards greater digitisation.

For the time being, the public development of the Free Software 'OpenJustitia' by the Swiss Federal Supreme Court has ceased because of a new legal opinion. The reason for this abrupt end is apparently the legal uncertainty regarding public contractors in Switzerland. The FSFE demands that the missing legal framework be created as soon as possible so that software developed with public funding in Switzerland in the future can also be released as Free Software.

Every year, the FSFE is organising the "Document Freedom Day", a global campaign to highlight the importance of Open Standards for our freedom of communication, interoperability and indepedence from vendor lock-in. For this campaign, FSFE's Berlin office is looking for an Intern PR / Campaigning in full time from January 1st until March 31st.

FSFE and Italian consumer association ADUC, along with Italian group ILS, are asking regulators to take concrete steps to protect Italians from being forced to pay for software they do not want or need. Italy’s High Court ruled in September that computer vendors must reimburse customers for the price of unwanted non-free software that comes pre-installed on PCs and laptops. Today, FSFE, ADUC and ILS have sent a letter to the Italian competition authorities, calling on them to ensure that vendors will comply with the High Court’s decision, and respect the rights of their customers.

On Tuesday, Munich's first mayor finally reacted to an inquiry by the Green Party (in German) related to rumours regarding a possible switch back to a Windows-based desktop environment. The answer to the inquiry shows that there is no factual basis for the claims made by first mayor and second mayor. An evaluation of the IT infrastructure and -processes is underway. FSFE calls on the city council to include vendor independence as well as interoperability as factors in the investigation, since they were central reasons for Munich to switch to Free Software in the first place.

Italy's High Court has struck a blow to the
practice of forcing non-free software on buyers of PCs and
laptops. According to La Repubblica, the court ruled on Thursday that a laptop buyer was entitled to receive a refund for the price of the Microsoft Windows license on his computer.

From 13 – 15 June 2014 FSFE had its German speaking team meeting in the
Linuxhotel in Essen. The participants had some problems to travel there
because of the chaos resulting from a heavy thunderstorm in the region. A
lot of train lines where not functional, and the situation on the streets
was also chaotic. But just because no ICE trains stop in Essen does not
mean we will not continue our work for Free Software. In the end we were
able to bring all volunteers to the Linuxhotel to plan further activities
and discuss current issues.

The European Commission has recently renewed its commitment to a
proprietary desktop and secret file formats.The Commission is refusing
to get serious about breaking free from vendor lock-in, and is
ignoring all available alternatives. In doing so, the EU's civil
service fails to practice what it preaches.

Today our sister organisation, the FSF, published their e-mail self
defence guide and their infographic in 6 new languages. It is now
available in English, German, Brazilian Portuguese, French, Russian,
Turkish, and Japanese. They explain the installation of the necessary
programs for e-mail encryption under GNU/Linux, MacOS, and Microsoft
Windows; the key generation; the web of trust; as well as the usage of
those programs. All you need is a computer with an Internet connection,
an email account, and about half an hour. Please give us feedback, so we
can include that before printing the infographics, and help us to spread
them.

The European elections have brought 33 Free Software supporters into the new European Parliament. Candidates across the political spectrum signed the Free Software Pact, promising to support Free Software and Open Standards during their time in Parliament. Out of 162 signatories, 33 were elected

On today's "Day
against DRM", the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) has sent an open letter to the
European Commission, asking the EC to prevent Digital
Restrictions Management technology from being closely integrated
with the HTML5 standard.

Open Standards were celebrated to the ends of the earth for Document Freedom Day 2014, with 51 events in 22 countries. The campaign for interoperability was enacted from Tokyo to Rio, and Birmingham to Taipei.

Today the Linux Foundation announced the "Core Infrastructure Initiative" to fund and support Free Software projects that are critical to the security of Internet users. The first project to receive funding will be OpenSSL, which is used for secure data transportation by millions of websites. FSFE welcomes this initiative.

After multiple public hearings and political debates, the German Federal Network Agency (BNetzA) presented a set
of proposed regulations (German)
that would eliminate compulsory use of particular routers and improve the transparency of telecommunication
firms for customers. Compulsory routers tie customers to a device provided by the ISP. The Free Software Foundation
Europe (FSFE), Chaos Computer Club (CCC), and the project leadership of
IPFire and OpenWrt, as well as other experts,
reviewed these regulations and gave comments to
the BNetzA (German)

In
an open
letter to the European Parliament and the European Commission,
Free Software Foundation Europe
and Open Forum Europe are
asking the European institutions to improve their support for Open
Standards. The letter is directed to Giancarlo Vilella, the president
of the European Parliament's DG ITEC and chair of the
Inter-Institutional Committee for Informatics.

Over the following 24 hours Open Standards will be celebrated to the ends of the earth. The Document Freedom Day campaign for interoperability is being enacted from Tokyo to Rio, and Birmingham to Taipei. 41 Events are taking place in 18 countries so far.

The revelations from Edward Snowden concerning massive
surveillance of communications demonstrates the need for each person to be
able to control their computers and phones. Yet computer and telephone
manufacturers and retailers typically impose on users programs that jeopardise
their privacy.

Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE), Open Invention Network (OIN),
and The Linux Foundation announced today the launch of the Asian Legal
Network. The Asian Legal Network was established to provide a leading
forum for sharing knowledge and best practices regarding Free Software
legal affairs, particularly those that relate to market participants
in Asia.

From May 22 to 25 in 2014 European citizens will vote for candidates standing for the European Parliament. This is an ideal time to engage with politicians with why Free Software matters. Help us to get the candidates across Europe to declare their support for Free Software.

…Stefan "Penny" Harmuth! The election period for this year's Fellowship
GA seat has ended on February 28. There was just one candidate running for the Fellowship GA seat this time. The more we are happy that still 20,3% of our Fellows took their chance to support Stefan Harmuth in his run for the seat.

On February 14th, people all around the world expressed
their gratitude and appreciation not only to their partner but also to Free
Software and its contributors. With our yearly #ilovefs we asked you to
thank your favourite developers and projects and were overwhelmed by the
resonance in blogs, social networks, and mailing
lists.

On 14th February, the Free Software Foundation Europe
asks all Free Software users to think about the dedicated hard-working
people in the Free Software community and to show them their appreciation like last year.

The Italian government has made Free Software the default choice for public administrations. In a document published last Wednesday, the Italian Digital Agency issued rules saying that all government organisations in the country must consider using Free Software before buying licenses for proprietary programs.

As a reader of our website, you are aware of the
importance of Free Software for a free society. The FSFE has been fighting
for Free Software since 2001. Since then, we have made a big difference by
exercising political pressure, helping Free Software developers with legal
expertise, and building public awareness for software freedom. To continue
this important work, we need a total budget of 390,000 Euro for 2014. We are
currently still 160,000 short of this goal.

For a long time, cars were a symbol of freedom and independence. No
longer. In its Zoe electric car, car maker Renault apparently has the
ability to remotely prevent the battery from charging. And that’s more
chilling than it may sound.

Today FSFE launches a new campaign to make young people aware of the digital restrictions that they tolerate. Microblogging and guerilla stickering form core components of this fresh strategy for engaging youth in fighting for digital freedom.

It was 30 years ago that Richard Stallman announced the GNU project. An initiative that started with a
programmer's frustration over a broken printer driver has changed our society.
The idea of software that everyone can use, study, share and improve has proven
very powerful indeed.

A coalition of more than 265 organisations launched a list of 13 International Principles on the Application of Human Rights to Communication Surveillance. The groups officially presented the list of principles on Friday last week during the 24th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva.

We need computers we can trust. The recent
news about planet-wide surveillance make clear how important
computer systems are for our society. Control of these computer
systems needs to be in the hands of their users.

Privacy is a fundamental human right, and is central to maintaining
democratic societies. FSFE joins more than 100 other organisations in
demanding that states respect human rights, and bring their
surveillance apparatus under democratic control. We have signed the International
Principles on the Application of Human Rights to Communications
Surveillance. These principles are an important contribution to
the discussion about how to provide security in a free society. More
than one year in the making, they are now more relevant than ever.

FSFE has sent an open letter to Estonia's National Electoral Committee (NEC) regarding the country's Internet voting system. We ask the NEC to release the software used in the election process as Free Software.

In a recent antitrust submission to the
European Commission, a Microsoft-led coalition falsely claimed that the
distribution of Free Software free of charge hurts competition. FSFE has written
a letter to the European Commission's competition authorities to
refute this claim, and make it clear that Free Software is
critical for an open, competitive IT market.

FSFE supports the Open Letter to stop surveillance. The letter calls for twelve
political steps including the development and promotion of Free Software for
digital self-defence. The letter was initiated by Digitale Gesellschaft and
also signed by several organisations including CCC, Creative Commons Germany, the German journalist
association, DigitalCourage, EFF, EDRI, Greenpeace Central/East Europe,
Transparency International Germany, the German Consumer Protections, Wikimedia,
and others.

Free Software Foundation Europe and Open Rights Group have sent
an open letter [pdf] to the
President of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz. Mr Schulz has recently
been asked [pdf] to produce a study on transparency within the
Parliament.

In an article
published today, The Guardian describes how Microsoft is actively
cooperating with the NSA. According to the article, Microsoft is providing
the NSA with broad access to the communications of anyone using the
company's services:

Today Hemlis, a proposal for a new encrypted mobile messaging app, received $125,000 in crowdfunding. It’s wonderful to see ambitious new software projects get support from the community, but how open will it be?

Today, the Free Software Foundation Europe publishes its
Free Software related election questions for this fall's elections
to the German parliament, which will take place on
September 22.
All political parties have responded to the questions, which cover
issues like users' control over their electronic devices, the
release of publicly funded computer programs as Free Software, and
software patents.

The Regional
Court of Hamburg [Landgericht Hamburg] found FANTEC GmbH guilty of
violating the GNU General Public License in their media player FANTEC
3DFHDL. In the case between Harald Welte versus FANTEC GmbH the court
decided that FANTEC has to pay a penalty fee plus additional costs for the
lawyers, and has to give out the exact information about their chain of
distribution of the FANTEC 3DFHDL Media Player.

In a Communication published today, the European Commission urges public bodies to break free from vendor lock-in in their IT systems. The Commission wants public bodies to rely on standards rather than brand names and proprietary technology when they buy software.

Days before the protests in Taksim Square erupted, President Erdoğan was in America. On behalf of an ambitious education investment project called FATIH, he toured Silicon Valley as the guest of America's largest technology companies, each of whom are hoping to land a contract for more than 10 million new tablet computers.

Faced with user protests, Microsoft has been forced to
make the terms for its latest Xbox gaming console look a little less
restrictive. However, the “new” terms which had caused
such outrage were not in fact new at all: they were similar to most other
proprietary software licences, including those covering other Microsoft
software products and on-line services.

On Friday the 7th of June the German Parliament decided
upon a joint
motion to limit software patents (see English translation by
BIKT). The Parliament urges the German Government to take steps to
limit the granting of patents on computer programs. Software should
exclusively be covered by copyright, and the rights of the copyright
holders should not be devalued by third parties' software patents. The
only exception where patents should be allowed are computer programs which
replace a mechanical or electromagnetic component. In addition the
Parliament made clear that governmental actions related to patents must
never interfere with the legality of distributing Free Software.

As reported in the our last
newsletter, W3C wants to implement usage controls on the web.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) now published a formal
objection to the HTML working group draft charter. Free Software
Foundation Europe fully supports EFF's objections.

In April the German Parliament (the 'Bundestag') has introduced a joint
motion against software patents. It urges the German government
to take steps to limit the granting of patents on computer programs.
After the first hearing in Parliament, Matthias Kirschner was invited
for FSFE as external expert to the legal committee meeting on May 13th.
FSFE published a written
statement and we published
the notes of our oral presentation. There will be a second
meeting of a committee and afterwards on the 6th of June the Parliament
will vote upon the motion.

Today, May 3rd 2013, is the international day against Digital Restrictions Management (DRM). Usually, the term DRM refers to various restrictions that companies – or any other content provider – impose on digital media and data. These restrictions are there to let providers decide what you can do with your media and data and what not. This blog entry sheds light on a related issue: the loss of digital and physical control of your own device.

This Friday, May 3rd 2013, FSFE is joining the 8th international "Day against DRM" campaign in the call to end Digital Restrictions Management (DRM). The fight against DRM has been gathering momentum in the past weeks. Freedom activists rallied against DRM in HTML5, stressing this technology's harmful effects on innovation and user's freedom. On today's Day Against DRM, our sister organisation the Free Software Foundation will deliver the petition signatures opposing DRM in HTML5 to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)in Boston.

On April 27, the administrative court of Almada, Portugal, declared a 550, 000 Euro contract between Microsoft and the municipality of Almada to be illegal. The technical specifications of the competition launched by the municipality prevented any company other than Microsoft and their partners to submit a proposal.

Join us in calling on the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and its member organisations to reject the Encrypted Media Extensions proposal (EME). This proposal aims at incorporating support for Digital Restriction Management (DRM) into HTML and would therefore exclude Free Software browsers from being compatible with many web pages.

A group of Free Software activists from Romania and Moldova has joined FSFE's program of associate organisations. Active since 2008, Ceata incorporated as a foundation in February 2013. Fundația Ceata and FSFE will work together to promote software freedom in Romania and throughout Europe.

The German Parliament, the Bundestag, has introduced
a joint motion against software patents. The resolution urges the
German government to take steps to limit the granting of patents on
computer programs.

On April 8, Microsoft will discontinue its Windows Messenger service. All current users will be switched to Skype. The Free Software Foundation Europe advises former users of Windows Messenger to take this as an opportunity to embrace
Open Standards such as Jabber (XMPP) instead of switching to Skype.

The German newspaper taz.die tageszeitung (TAZ) receives this year's
Document Freedom Day award. With this award, the Free Software
Foundation Europe (FSFE) and the Foundation for a Free Information
Infrastructure (FFII) honour organisations that make exemplary use of
Open Standards.

In 30 countries around the world, activists are celebrating Open Standards on today's Document Freedom Day, an annual campaign to promote Open Standards. More than 50 groups are hosting events around the world, from Brussels to Nicaragua to Nepal.

…Heiki "Repentinus" Ojasild! The election period for this year's Fellowship
GA seat has ended on March 15 and it was exciting until the end. Albert Dengg
who also stood for the Fellowship GA seat promised to stay around and
continue his great work for FSFE in their area.

Last week, the European Commission slapped the company with a fine of more than 500 million EUR for breaching a settlement over the bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows. Karsten Gerloff, the president of the FSFE, is explaining position of the Free Software Foundation Europe.

Every year on February 14th people celebrate love,
relationship with others.. and for the third year running, the wonders of Free
Software. All around the world people expressed their love during the "I love
Free software" day. We
would like to thank you for participating, and share some lovely quotes, dents,
tweets, blog entries and articles that were done because of your dedication to
Free Software. When developers
will read your declarations, they will definitely find extra energy to carry on
their good work.

On February 14th Free Software Foundation Europe asks all
Free Software users to show their appreciation for Free Software. FSFE suggests
to take this day as an opportunity to say "thank you" to one of the dedicated
hard-working people in the Free Software community.

Anna Morris is co-founder or FLOSSIE conference for women in Free Software, Manchester Fellowship Group Deputy Coordinator, and Co-Director of Ethical Pets Ltd. She is currently writing a book on video editing with Free Software, and volunteering with Document Freedom Day 2013 in her spare time.

A group of 45 Free Software organisations have signed a legal complaint to Italy's Ministry of Education.
FSFE, AsSoLi, Wikimedia Italia, the Free Software User Group Italia, the Associazione per l'Informazione Geografica Libera (GFoss.it), the
Italian Linux Society, LibreItalia and 38 other groups warn that the country's Ministry of Education is putting Free Software at an unfair disadvantage.

Come and see what FSFE did in 2012! Read our annual report to find out
what we achieved, how we did it, and what's ahead for
2013. We thank all of our Fellows, donors and sponsors
for making our work possible! If you like what you see, please
remember to sign
up as a supporter, so we can keep you updated.

Today, the European Parliament has adopted a proposal to create a patent with
unitary effect for Europe. This decision will leave Europe with a patent system
that is both deeply flawed and prone to overreach. It also ends democratic
control of Europe's innovation policy.
"We are disappointed that so many MEPs were prepared to throw
Europe's researchers and innovators under the bus just to achieve a deal, any
deal" says Karsten Gerloff, President of the Free Software Foundation Europe.
"It is natural that after nearly four decades of discussions on a single patent
system for Europe, most of those involved simply want the debate to end. But we
would have expected more of our elected representatives."

The European Parliament is about to vote on a "unitary patent" for
Europe in its plenary session on December 11. The proposal currently
on the table is widely known to have serious legal and practical
problems. In the light of these problems, Free Software Foundation
Europe urges the Parliament's members to delay the vote until a better
solution can be worked out.

7 days until the fundraising is over! Once again, thanks to everyone who has donated and is helping us to reach our
goal. Yet, we need a last "push": we have reached 82% so we need 188€ more. If you still
have not donated, please do it!. With only a small contribution (the average donation amount is 23€)
you will help us to achieve our goal.

Two weeks have been gone since we launched the PDF Readers fundraising. First,
we want to thank everyone who made a donation. Currently, we received 856
EUR (more than 75% of the goal). Thanks to your donation, and you informing
your friends about this work, we will reach the 1100 EUR until the 4th of
December.

Yesterday the German Ministry of the
Interior published a white paper about "Trusted Computing" and "Secure Boot".
The white paper says that "device owners must be in complete control of (able
to manage and monitor) all the trusted computing security systems of their
devices." This has been one of FSFE's key demands from the beginning. The document
continues that "delegating this control to third parties requires conscious and
informed consent by the device owner".

Finnish Free Software activist Otto Kekäläinen and Danish hacker Ole Tange are the recipients of the 2012 Nordic Free Software Award. With the Nordic Free Software award, given out for the 6th time this year, the Swedish Association for Free Software and Free Culture (FFKP, Föreningen Fri Kultur och Programvara) honours people and projects who have made important contributions to software freedom.

What would you think if your government told you which brand of car to drive on public roads? The same way the public administration is required to be neutral on this, it should not decide which software you use when reading PDF documents. The state should offer choice and especially promote software that respects its citizens' freedom.

This month we interviewed Hugo Roy, FSFE’s French Team coordinator
and co-founder of the Digital Freedoms association. He joined FSFE
in 2009 as an intern, assisting FSFE president Karsten Gerloff. In
France, Hugo is also active with April and of French Data
Network.

Are you willing to do something to improve our society? Do you think that
our society development relies on a fair and transparent digital sphere? Do you
want to increase our society's freedom? FSFE has one internship position
available, starting February 2013. We are looking for bright, motivated, innovative
people who want to make a real difference towards a free information society. Apply.

The Free Software Foundation Europe and twenty Italian civil society
organisations wrote
a letter
to the President of the Authority for the Protection of Personal Data,
asking the agency to ensure that all documents published on its
website can be read and used with Free Software programs.

Free Software Foundation Europe and twenty Italian civil society organisations wrote a letter to the President of the Authority for the Protection of Personal Data, asking the agency to ensure that all documents published on its website can be read and used with Free Software programs.

Will lawsuits like Apple vs Samsung soon take place in Europe? The
European Parliament is about to set the future course for Europe's
patent system. On September 17th and 18th, the European Parliament's
Legal Affairs committee will discuss a proposal for a EU-wide patent.
From now until September 18th, FSFE will continuously provide
updates and analysis on the unitary patent on our website.

Now that software patents are back on the table, it’s
important to understand how the European patent system actually
works. You need to know this in order to discuss the unitary
patent and FSFE’s demands with the MEPs you call and ask for
support. Patent policy belongs under legislative control. Our current
political processes and institutions aren’t perfect, but they’re
certainly better than the EPO’s secretive insider culture. Good
patent policy needs transparency, accountability and
participation. The current proposal for the unitary patent lacks
all of these things.

Should Europe have software patents? The discussion is back in full
force. After the European Parliament rejected patents on software in
2005, things went quiet for a while. Now the European Parliament is
about to decide on setting up a single patent for Europe, known as the
“unitary patent”. This is a chance to get rid of software patents. But
if we don’t manage to achieve a real change in the current proposal,
software patents will become even more entrenched in Europe. Get
active, and let's get rid of software patents once and for all!

When the companies or authors that license Free Software enter bankruptcy there is a risk that granted Free Software licenses will face legal challenges in some jurisdictions. FSFE is now trying to prevent this situation in Germany. The expert institution ifrOSS supported by FSFE suggests German Ministry of Justice to include a specific Free Software clause in the German Insolvency Code.

Last May 23th, the Council of Region Lazio, Italy, approved a Regional Law
on "Reuse of information and public data, and connected initiatives". With
further regulation, methods and technical rules for reusing software will be
determined. In the meantime, we proposed them a checklist of motivations by
which both Institutions and the Community would be advantages by a migration
to systems based on Free Software.

The IT department of the city of Helsinki claimed in a report to the city board that migrating to OpenOffice would cost is over 21 million euros. On 10th of April 2012, FSFE filed a Freedom of Information request, asking the city how it had arrived at a surprisingly high cost estimates for running OpenOffice (now LibreOffice) on the city's workstations. The city of Helsinki has now denied this request and has stated that it will not release any details about the calculations.

FSFE has two internship positions available, starting August
2012. We are looking for bright, motivated people who want
to make a real difference for a free information society.
Whether your background is in politics, law, computer
science or other fields, we welcome your application. If you
want to spend between four and twelve exciting months
working at the point where technology, society and politics
meet, apply
now.

The European Court of Justice has ordered Microsoft to finally pay a record
fine for using its near-monopoly position on the desktop to keep rivals out of the
workgroup server market. Four years ago, the European Commission slapped
the software giant with a fine of 899 million Euros for its anticompetitive
behaviour. In today's ruling, the ECJ ruled that this unprecedented fine
was largely justified.

This month we interviewed Bjarni Runar Einarsson, the founder and lead developer of PageKite, an application which allows the publication of websites stored on personal computers and mobiles. He won the Nordic Free Software Award for his work in 2010.

The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) has started an initiative to advance fair public procurements in Finland. The initiative concentrates on IT related procurement notices that require brand instead of defining functionalities required by the procurer. To date FSFE has skimmed over 300 procurement notices, and of those taken into closer analysis, 14 have been found to clearly violate the Finnish procurement law. These violating notices explicitly asked for tenders of specific brands of software manufacturers or products and thus discriminate all other brands and manufacturers, effectively stopping free competition.

Last week's draft Communications Bill outlines how civil servants are again intent on surveilling the internet communications of innocent British citizens. Fortunately, Free Software provides several ways with which you can protect your privacy online, regardless of the measures that the Coalition may impose upon you or your telecoms providers.

On Saturday June 9, activists across Europe are taking to the streets to
protest against the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). They
demand that the European Parliament should finally reject this
controversial treaty, which would greatly harm citizens' rights. The
Parliament will hold a plenary vote on ACTA in July.

FSFE's goal is to ensure that the owners of IT devices are always in full
and sole control of them. This fundamental principle is recently being
challenged by "Secure Boot". For maintaining sustained growth in the
development and use of software, the broad availability of general
purpose computers is crucial. Today FSFE's published an analysis on the
topic.

FSFE has submitted its response
[pdf] to a
public consultation
by the UK Government, concerning a definition of Open Standards and a
policy for increasing their use in the UK's public sector. If the
policy is applied boldly and proactively, the UK stands to greatly
gain from increased competition in the software market, with much
greater opportunities for small companies. On the other hand, even
minor lapses in implementation could derail the policy entirely.

FSFE has submitted its response
[Update: see as PDF version or HTML version] to a
public consultation
by the UK Government, concerning a definition of Open Standards and a
policy for increasing their use in the UK's public sector. If the
policy is applied boldly and proactively, the UK stands to greatly
gain from increased competition in the software market, with much
greater opportunities for small companies. On the other hand, even
minor lapses in implementation could derail the policy entirely.

This week 1.1 million French voters living outside of France have the opportunity to cast a vote for their eleven members of Parliament via the internet. Voting will be made through a web application which requires the use of non-free software¹, according to citizens using Free software.

Giacomo Poderi has worked as a translator and editor for FSFE, as well as completing a master’s degree in Philosophy. Currently he’s working on a Ph.D in sociology, which looks at the user experience in Free Software Projects, focusing on the turn-based strategy game ‘The Battle for Wesnoth’.

In Slovakia, a law introduced to reduce red tape has led to injustice. The state has mandated electronic means as a only way of fulfilling certain statutory obligations. However the dedicated web solution excludes some citizens from use as it is not interoperable and runs only on the software from one vendor. In absence of any non-electronic option, this means that state, in fact, prescribed the use of a certain product from a certain vendor. Who did not own the copy, had to buy one. Slovak textile importer deemed that state should not force him to use a certain software for his business and fulfilled its legal obligation by paper. Now the company faces EUR 5600 in fines.

Slovak textile importer EURA Slovakia, s.r.o. is facing EUR 5600 in fines because it did not buy and use the Microsoft Windows operating system for submitting electronic tax reports. Slovak tax administration gave EURA only two options: either to buy and use Microsoft Windows or face the fines. This is also how we could briefly summarize the decision of Slovak tax administration from a few weeks ago. The administration imposed several fines on a company, EURA Slovakia, which submitted its tax reports on paper, because the use of electronic form was impossible as the state's web application worked only on the Microsoft Windows operating system. The company now plans to appeal to the court and to demand that the state stops forcing businesses to use a certain product, instead of requiring that the public administration uses a multi-platform technical solution based on Open Standards that is available for everybody.

A report on the City of Helsinki's pilot project for the use of OpenOffice in the public administrations leaves the public with more questions than answers. The city trialled the Free Software productivity suite on the laptops of council members for ten months in 2011. The suite enjoyed high approval rates among its users. When the pilot was finished, the City produced a report stating that the costs of migrating the entire administration to OpenOffice would be very high.

Document Freedom Day 2012 was a great success!
America, Asia, Africa and Europe celebrated together
Open Standards at
54 events. It is no doubt that DFD is growing and we believe that it will be
even more successful next year. So what about having look at what happened around the world on
28th of March? And what has the Pope to do with Open Standards? Read our detailed report to find
out.

Manchester will be hacking for freedom this month when FSFE's Web Team sprint comes to the UK. Web team coordinators, together with a variety of international volunteers, will gather in a concerted effort to improve website features and infrastructure.

The Free Software Foundation Europe awarded the Slovak Commission for Standardization of the Public Administration Information Systems and its working groups with the Document Freedom Award this week. The Commission was awarded for its long standing commitment and achieved results in the field of the Open Standards. The prize was presented on the occasion of Document Freedom Day, the international day of Open Standards.

Environmentalists will be joined together by Free Software on March 31st when Manchester's "Big Green Festival" and Leicester's "Green Light Festival" are bridged by Free Software for participants to share thoughts and pictures between locations in real-time.

Karlsruhe, 28 March 2012 - 1&1, GMX and WEB.DE
receive the German Document Freedom Award for the use of Open Standards.
The prize is awarded by the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) and the
Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure e.V. (FFII). 1&1 is
awarded for automatically adding XMPP for all customers of their mail
services. The Document Freedom Award is awarded annually on the occasion
of Document Freedom Day - the international day for Open Standards. Last
years winners include tagesschau.de, Deutschland Radio, and the German
Foreign
Office.

Free Software advocates worldwide are today
celebrating information accessibility and Open Standards. 48 events in 17
countries are using demonstrations, talks and workshops to explain why Open Standards and Free Software are crucial to
a free and competitive information society.

British politicians need your help to understand Open Standards. Donate an information pack explaining their responsibility to use Free and accessible standards, and demonstrate the threat of vendor lock-in with the included pair of handcuffs.

With Document Freedom Day
coming up on Wednesday, we're publishing an article by FSFE co-founder
Bernhard Reiter. He discusses what makes a good data format, and argues
that Open Standards are good, but that we need to push further still. His
central question to data formats is "Can we make it simpler?"

Guido Günther is a Debian and GNOME contributor who added MIPS support to Debian, and worked for the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He discusses why Free Software was a good fit for the needs of embassies and consulates, and what drew him to take on big technical challenges in Debian.

This year's DFD is approaching fast, and we can already say that we
will have had a good year: More than 30 events have been registered in
South-America, Africa, Europe, Asia, and Oceania. However, both we and
you could do a lot better, and there is still time to register and
organise an event. North-America, Africa, Oceania, and Asia
desperately need more events. Also, while Central Europe is well
covered, Europe's western, eastern, and northern parts could do with
additional events. To organise an event, you can gather ideas from the
highlighted events below, or take a look at our
events page.

Do you know a certain politician who should really learn
more about Open Standards? Have you tried to explain the importance of Open
Standards to your boss, friends, local administration or service, but without
any results? Would support from the outside world help? Definitely! Inform
our Document
Freedom Day (DFD) team about your situation and we will send a free, remarkable
gift to your contact to help them learn more about the power of Open
Standards.

…Nikos Roussos! The election period for this year's Fellowship GA seat
has ended on February 29 and it was exciting until the end. Albert Dengg
and Gert Seidl who also stood for the Fellowship GA seat promised
to stay around and continue their great work for FSFE in their area.
"I'm really glad I got elected. I'll try to help FSFE's cause in every way
I can" says Nikos after his election victory.

On February 14th, people around the globe were
celebrating the "I love Free Software" day. To all of you, thank you very
much for participating in our #ilovefs-campaign and
for showing your support for Free
Software on this day. We were really
excited about your creativity and participiation. All these love
declarations went out to the developers, users and wizards behind Free
Software and their communities. While some of you dedicated their love to
specific programs that you enjoy most. We are pretty sure that their
developers and users have read your love declarations and that your love
will motivate them to carry on their good work. Here are just a few
examples and highlights of your love declarations.

On Monday, the US Department of Justice approved the sale of
Nortel's
patent portfolio to a consortium led by Apple and Microsoft. At the same
time, the DOJ and the European Commission allowed Google to buy
Motorola Mobility, thus giving the search company a sizable patent
portfolio.

ACTA, a multi-national treaty to enforce copyright and patents, is
threatening Free Software and freedom in the information society. It
endangers people's access to essential medicines. The treaty creates a
culture of surveillance and suspicion, and the way in which it was
negotiated is a mockery of proper democratic process.

"Let's be honest: In the Free Software community, we
exchange a lot of criticism. We write bug reports, tell others how they can
improve the software, ask them for new features, and generally are not shy
about criticising others. Sometimes we forget to say "thank you, for all your
work". As in the last years, we want to change this, at least for one day. So
on Tuesday the 14th of February we will celebrate the "I love Free Software" - Day , says Matthias
Kirschner, FSFE's #ilovefs campaign manager.

Free Software Foundation Europe has been awarded a grant from Mozilla. As announced during this weekend's FOSDEM conference in Brussels, FSFE will receive EUR 25,000 to support its work for freedom in the information society.

During the whole of February 2012, FSFE's Fellows will be
able to elect their representative in FSFE's General Assembly. The
winner of the election will help FSFE's strategic decision making body plan the
future of the organisation, and will join Hugo Roy who occupies
the other Fellowship seat since
2011. Both Fellowship representatives are full members of the General Assembly for a term of
two years, and have all the rights and obligations of other members.

On 28th of March 2012, we will be running a campaign for document liberation - Document Freedom Day 2012. On this occasion, we would like to ask you for help in promoting its underlying idea by means of your art.

A short post in French on the Mozilla Public License 2.0. If you want to know about it, you can read in English Luis Villa, who led the update process. Richard Fontana wrote an article (RedHat); and the FSF has lauded the compatibility with GNU licenses.)

For our January fellowship interview we met Heiki Ojasild. He joined the Free
Software Foundation Europe in 2011, undertaking the task of translating fsfe.org
into Estonian, his mother tongue. He is currently developing an XChat add-on, as
well as a website for free SVG and JavaScript games. In 2010 he took part in the
Baltic Olympiad in Informatics. In this interview, he explains us his views
about copyright, Digital Restrictions Management, kopimism, and activism.

The Free Software Foundation Europe plans to celebrate Valentine's Day on 14th February as an "I love Free Software" - Day. Please help us in showing your support for Free Software by participating in our online campaign. Emails, blogs, microblogs, donations, everything is welcome! There are free banners to use for your website available, too. In addition, this year will also be an event to celebrate Free Software in the Unperfekthaus in Essen. We would love to see you there!

Read about European concerns with SOPA, dangers of Secure
Boot, Nokia's move to sell 450 patents to a patent troll, summary of Free
Software developments in 2011, web blocking in Germany and many more.

Together with dozens of other civil society organisations,
FSFE has signed a letter to US Senate Majority Leader Harry
Reid, urging the Senate to stand up for human rights, defend
freedom of speech and the open internet, and reject the
SOPA and PIPA proposals currently before it.

In a reply to the BBC about proposed changes to the national
curriculum, Sam Tuke explains some of the ways
in which teaching Free Software programming skills in schools
is important to the future of Britain.

FSFE calls for an amendment that would eventually enable Free Software and Creative Commons licenses for Slovak citizens. Currently, these licenses are considered to be void due to lack of their written form and problems with formation of the contract. Slovakia is thus one of a few countries where these popular licensing tools still struggle with rigid legislative framework.

This year for the fourth time, the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) will assign the Document Freedom Award on the 28th of March 2012. With the Document Freedom Award, the FSFE and the FFII like to honor institutes or enterprises that made an outstanding contribution for the spread and the use of Open Standards. The Document Freedom Award is granted each year during the Document Freedom Day, the international day to celebrate the importance of Open Standards

Paul Boddie is a developer in the bioinformatics domain. In this
interview, he explains his conception of Free Software, which has a
lot to do with sustainable computing and with the ability to
use, maintain and develop solutions indefinitely.

City officials in Helsinki, Finland, are overwhelmingly
satisfied after trying
out the Free Software office suite OpenOffice.org on their laptops. 75% of 600
officials have been using OpenOffice.org exclusively since February, as part of
a pilot project where the city installed the program on 22,500 workstations.

This was an exciting year for Free Software, and for FSFE. We fought
against software patents and the way they restrict Free Software and
competition. We helped to defend the GPL against those who would take
away our freedom to study and modify the software on our computers,
and worked on many other important issues.

Competition authorities in the US and Europe are
currently investigating the sale of 6000 patents from Nortel,
a bankrupt telecommunications equipment manufacturer, to a
consortium of Apple, Microsoft and four other companies.

The European Commission has adopted a set of proposals for its
next framework program. Called Horizon 2020, this program will provide
80 billion EUR for research and development projects from 2014 to
2020. Prior to finalisation of the proposal, FSFE had provided
input
to the Commission in order to make the program accessible for Free
Software research and projects. Our input also aims at making the
results of publicly funded research available as widely as possible.

In the dispute between the companies AVM and Cybits the written reasoning for the decision
of the Regional Court of Berlin (PDF, German) is now available. The court
confirmed FSFE's view that users of GNU GPLed software are allowed to modify
and install it even if it is shipped as a part of an embedded device's
firmware.

The YaCy project is releasing version 1.0 of its peer-to-peer Free Software search engine. The software takes a radically new approach to search. YaCy does not use a central server. Instead, its search results come from a network of currently over 600 independent peers. In such a distributed network, no single entity decides what gets listed, or in which order results appear.

Mirko Boehm currently works as a researcher at the Technical University of Berlin, focusing on the subject of Free Software and copyright and patents. For a long time he has been involved with KDE. In our November Internship Interview he talks about interactions between Free Software communities and “corporate” world, and the role of Free Software at universities and in education.

The controversial ACTA treaty will be discussed tomorrow in the a closed meeting of the European Parliament's committee on international trade (INTA). Together with six other civil society organisations, FSFE has urged the Parliament to make the committee session public, so that European citizens can form their own opinions on ACTA.

The patent litigation between Microsoft and Barnes & Nobles is taking a new turn, with the revelation of Microsoft's patent strategies against Android: FUD, invalid patents, etc. according to Barnes & Nobles. Also, new questions arise on exact scope of the copyrightability of software, with the litigation between Oracle and Google, again on Android, exploring new issues on linking, user-space and APIs specifications.

Erik Josefsson is the winner of the Nordic Free Software Award
2011. With the award, the Swedish Foundation for Free Culture and
Free Software (FFKP) honours Josefsson for his achievements as a
campaigner for freedom in the information society.

The Dutch government wants to tie the country's schools to
a single software vendor for years to come. Dutch students using Free Software
or devices without Silverlight-support will find themselves locked out of
schools' online systems due to the use of proprietary technology and closed
standards. Marja Bijsterveldt, the secretary of education, recently said that
she is unwilling
to enforce the Dutch government's own Open Standards policy on educational
institutions. Instead, the government will accept long-term vendor
lock-in of educational institutions.

On November 8th the Regional Court of Berlin [Landgericht
Berlin] issued its decision in the previously reported case AVM Computersysteme
Vertriebs GmbH (AVM) v. Cybits AG (Cybits). In this case, AVM was essentially
trying to stop Cybits from modifying GNU GPL licensed Free Software inside of
their AVM Fritz!Box products. Yesterday, the court dismissed this principal
claim. Thus, it also confirmed that users of embedded devices with
pre-installed Free Software have the legal freedom to make, install, run and
distribute modifications to this Free Software. The Free Software Foundation
Europe (FSFE) and gpl-violations.org, both welcome this decision.

Rikard Fröberg works at the The Society for Free Culture and Software, and
contributes this year to the FSCONS organisation for the third time.
In the October Internship Interview he considers the importance of having an
active and engaged community of users, which, thanks to events like FSCONS, have
the opportunity of direct interaction.

Last week Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the Next Big Thing (TM) for Facebook: OpenGraph. Facebook intends to act as its own private Internet, but fortunately there are lots of projects out there that will do the same things that Facebook does, and much more.

Stefan Kangas is the President of the recently started Fripost, the Free
Email Association, which proposes itself to deliver a free and reliable Email
service. This service, which is running since February, represents an alternative
to proprietary Email providing services, which may limit user's freedom and privacy.

Richard Shipman, Teaching Fellow at the Computer Science
department of Aberystwyth University, talks about the
importance of promoting Free Software alongside
alternatives at school level, and what role the computer
sciences can play in relating the messages of Free Software
to other institutions and disciplines.

On Saturday 13th August Free Software activists came to FSFE’s PDF Readers Sprint in Manchester and found 59 previously unreported adverts for proprietary PDF readers, all of them on UK Council websites.

OggCamp 2011 attracted 200-300 people, and the FSFE booth was successfully run by myself and Chris Woolfrey. We talked to approximately 60 people, handed out approximately 120 leaflets, received one donation, and sold five t-shirts. FSFE was generally well received and I felt that the booth was a great success.

This weekend Free Software activists will find and report web advertising for proprietary software that is being funded by the British Government. Activists will meet on Saturday at Manchester's 'MadLab' Hackerspace to hunt for new adverts and contact government departments requesting that they be removed.

What constitutes a socially acceptable and sustainable approach to "Cloud Computing" and "Software as a Service"? Georg Greve examines seven categories of requirements of cloud based systems which are truly Free.

Computer Aided Design software is critically important to a variety of industries and professions. It's also notorious for being poorly catered for by Free Software applications. Here's a brief summary of the current situation.

At FSFE's General Assembly which took place in Ljubljana, Slovenia, on
June 11, FSFE's members elected Henrik Sandklef as the organisation's
Vice President. A computer scientist and GNU Hacker from Gothenburg,
Sweden, Henrik has been active with FSFE since 2005. He takes over
from Fernanda Weiden, who held the volunteer position for the past two
years.

Yesterday in Berlin a court hearing took place
in a case that could set a crucial precedent for the embedded industry
(see also "AVM violating license of the Linux
kernel"). In the lawsuit between AVM and Cybits, AVM maintained
that others should not be allowed to modify Free Software on computers
bought from AVM, such as the widely used Fritz!Box. At the heart of the
debate is the Linux kernel, distributed under the GNU GPL which
guarantees exactly this freedom to users. Free Software Foundation
Europe (FSFE) and gpl-violations.org today published a
detailed report
about the hearing.

Berlin, 20th June - Tomorrow on June 21st a legal case
will be heard before the District Court of Berlin which may have enormous
consequences for the way that software is developed and distributed. The
adversaries in the case are the manufacturer and distributor of DSL routers AVM
Computersysteme Vertriebs GmbH (AVM), and Cybits AG (Cybits) which produces
children's web-filtering software. Both companies use the Linux kernel, which is licensed
under the GNU General Public License, version 2 (GNU GPL); a Free Software
license permitting everyone to use, study, share, and improve works which use it.

Fresh action in the European Commission's antitrust
proceedings against Microsoft: On May 24, the European Court of
Justice conducts a hearing on Microsoft's appeal against the
fine. FSFE has participated
in the case for a decade and will intervene on the Commission's
behalf.

In the case of the Foreign Office turning away from Free
Software, the German Government is entangling itself in contradictions. The
reaction of the Government to an inquiry by "Bündnis 90/Grüne" has led to
more pending questions than answers.

On Friday, Free Software Foundation
Europe asked the European Commission to create a legal
avenue for citizens seeking collective redress against
companies. In its
contribution to a public
consultation by the
Commision, FSFE argues that consumers should be able to join
forces in order to defend their rights against harmful business
practices.

Michiel explains how the Unhosted project could change the face of Free Software web applications, and solve problems of privacy, scalability and affordability for all kinds of software provided as a service.

Competition authorities in Germany and the
United States today highlighted the fundamental role that Free
Software plays for competition in the software market. After
several months of discussions, the US Department of Justice
(DOJ) and the German Federal Competition Office (FCO) have
allowed a consortium of Microsoft, Oracle, Apple and EMC to
acquire 882 patents from Novell only subject to conditions
clearly intended to prevent their use against Free Software
players.

On April 6, FSFE provided the German competition authorities with its
views
on the sale of Novell's patents to CPTN, a joint venture of
Microsoft, Apple, EMC and Oracle. According to the German authorities,
the terms of the sale have been slightly modified since
we registered
our concerns with them on December 22, 2010.
Despite these modifications, the transfer of a substantial number of
patents to firms with a history of using them against Free Software
remains a worrying prospect. Both documents are available on our
overview
page for the case.

Today the ARD internet platform Tagesschau.de will
receive an award for the use of Open Standards at the "Document Freedom
Day". The prize is awarded by the Free Software Foundation Europe
(FSFE) and the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure e.V. (FFII)
for offering the broadcasted shows also in the free video format "Ogg Theora".

Today, activists in 37 cities around the world are raising awareness for
Open Standards and open document formats. In workshops, talks and other
events, they are explaining why Open Standards and Free Software are crucial
to a free and competitive information society.

As companies and communities come together to raise awareness of Open Standards for the forth consecutive Document Freedom Day, the issue of freedom from restricted digital files is more relevant in the UK than ever.

Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) welcomes the initiative for users' freedom taken by the Italian Association for Users and Consumers Rights (ADUC).
On January 24, ADUC filed a complaint against Microsoft demanding that the company should reimburse consumers who return unused licenses for the Microsoft Windows operating systems that are pre-installed on newly bought computers.

Free Software Foundation Europe is ten years old this March. FSFE was
founded in 2001
as "an organization dedicated to Free Software activities in Europe" and
"the official sister
organization of the Free Software Foundation in the United States"
in Europe.

The 'Institude for Government' think tank has published a 100 page report on public sector IT in the UK called "System Error: Fixing the flaws in government IT", which calls for dramatic change to government attitudes, and wider use of both Free Software and, as Glynn Moody points out, the principles behind its development.

In a meeting called by the Home Office's lead architect, members of the British Computer Society's Open Source Specialist Group argued that some proprietary software was "viral" in the way that it had spread and stagnated within government and industry, and should be banned from government systems.

A presentation given by the Cabinet Office which outlines its expectations for greater availability and support of Free Software in the public sector is available to the public. It makes clear that the government sees great value in high quality FS, and expects to make significant savings by using it.

All through the month of February, FSFE's Fellows cast their votes
for one of their number to represent them in FSFE's General
Assembly. The election period ended yesterday at midnight, with
the following results:

February 14, 01:38:27 UTC, the first identi.ca message related to FSFE’s “I ♥ Free Software” campaign airs on identi.ca. This was only the start of a tremendous love declaration to Free Software developpers and applications that went out until late at night, around 3:00 a.m.

Why not make this February 14th a very special Valentine's Day?
On Valentine's Day, FSFE calls on Free Software users
everywhere
to show
their love for Free Software. It is the perfect occasion to
show our love for Free Software and the possibility to use
computers in freedom.

Free Software Foundation Europe is asking the Members of the European
Parliament to wait for legal advice before voting on a unitary patent
for Europe. While a proposal is on the Parliament's agenda for the
coming week, a legal opinion by the European Court of Justice is
expected later this month.

Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) invites individuals, community
groups and institutions to celebrate the Document Freedom Day (DFD) on
March 30th. DFD is a global day to celebrate Open Standards and open
document formats and its importance. Open Standards ensure the freedom
to access your data, and the freedom to build Free Software to write
and read data in specific formats.

The process might have slipped away quietly. But now it is in the spotlight, thanks to a request from the SPD parliamentary group: The Foreign Office (AA), once a "beacon project" for the use of Free Software in the federal ministries, will return to proprietary software. The Linux-Verband (LIVE) and the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) regret this development.

Free Software Foundation Europe has written to the
German competition authorities in order to share its concerns about
the sale of Novell's patents to a consortium called CPTN, made up of
Microsoft, Oracle, Apple and EMC.

Only one month after the letters for the PDFreaders campaign of FSFE
were sent, 172 public institutions have removed advertisements for proprietary
PDF readers from their websites. Particularly outstanding were the responses
from Croatia, Russia and Slovenia. In Croatia almost all reported institutions deleted the advertisement. Half of those contacted in Russia and Slovenia fulfilled FSFE's
request.

The European Commission today published its long-awaited revision of
the European Interoperability Framework. This document aims at promoting interoperability in the European public sector.
The document is the result of a prolonged and hard-fought process. Free Software Foundation Europe accompanied this process and offered input to the European Commission at various stages.

The European Commission will spend EUR 189 million on proprietary
software over the next six years, in direct contradiction to its own
decisions and guidelines. The Commission last week announced a
six-year framework contract to acquire a wide range of mostly
proprietary software and related services1.

One month, one campaign, one goal: getting rid of non-free
software advertisements on public websites. In four weeks, FSFE received
reports concerning 2162 European institutions who
advertise non-free PDF readers. Apart from the 305 activists who
participated to the search, 1500 individuals, 46 businesses and 38
organisations signed our Petition
For The Removal Of Proprietary Software Advertising On Public Websites.
Now that the hunt is over, it's time to chase up those websites which encourage
visitors to jeopardise their freedom. It's time to stamp out the ads!

During Free Software Foundation Europe's pdfreaders.org campaign,
Free Software activists from 41 countries have reported 2286 public sector institutions which advertise non-free PDF readers on their
websites. FSFE will now contact these institutions, trying to get as many
advertisements for non-free PDF readers as possible removed before the end of the year.
Progress will be documented on the list of reported institutions.

FSFE yesterday sent a letter to the European Commission to support Open Standards and interoperability. In the drawn-out battle to retain at least a weak recommendation for Open Standards in the revised European Interoperability Framework, FSFE has countered a leaked letter by proprietary lobby group Business Software Alliance with its own thorough analysis of the relation between standards and patents.

With the upcoming local elections, the Vienna Fellowship group asked the political
parties about Free Software and Open Standards. Eight out of fifteen parties
replied to the questions about use of Free Software, adoption of Open Standards
for communication (internal and external) and E-Governance.

The Free Software Foundation Europe calls on all Europeans to seek out advertisements for proprietary PDF readers on their government's
websites, and report them. In addition, FSFE has prepared
a petition
demanding an end to such advertising practices, and encourages the
public to sign it.

The Free Software Foundation Europe is calling on European Free Software
businesses to participate in a survey of business attitudes
towards the acceptability of including patents in industry standards.

For Rogall-Grothe a valid technological standard must first be fully publicized, secondly be unrescritively and consistently used, and thirdly not be subjected to any legal restrictions. "The German government has clearly stated that a technical standard will only be recognised if it can be implemented by all organisations, including Free Software companies and developers", says Matthias Kirschner, German Coordinator at the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE).

On 25 May 2010 the regional government authority of
Bolzano decided to spend 2.2 million EUR over the next three years to
renew software licenses from Microsoft Ireland, and to buy additional
licenses. All this was done without a public call for tender, making it
impossible for competing suppliers of similar software to make offers of
their own.

David Reyes Samblas Martinez is the founder of Spanish Copyleft Hardware
store Tuxbrain, and attended the famous Open University of Catalunya.
He’s also the subject of this month’s Fellowship interview, in which he
answers questions on hardware manufacturing, e-learning and Free Software politics.

The European Commission has officially published its long-awaited
Digital Agenda, outlining its policy plans for the next five years.
"While it includes some important building blocks for Free Software, the
omission of Open Standards rips a gaping hole in this agenda," says
Karsten Gerloff, President of the Free Software Foundation Europe.

Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) on Saturday received the Theodor Heuss Medal in
recognition of its work for freedom in the information society. The medal
is awarded once a year in Stuttgart by a non-partisan foundation named for
West Germany's first president.

Berlin 28. April 2010. Georg Greve, founding
president of the Free Software Foundation Europe, has received the Cross
of Merit on ribbon of the Federal Republic of Germany (Verdienstkreuz am
Bande). Georg received this high award from the German President for his
work on Free Software and Open Standards.

Today is Document Freedom Day 2010. For the third time, groups all over
the world are celebrating open document formats and Open Standards. They
are raising awareness for how a technical issue impacts our day- to-day
lives.

The European Commission is currently trying to get a new draft
of the European Interoperability Framework (EIF) approved by
Member States. The draft gives rise to concerns that the
Commission is giving up its worldwide leadership in the use of
Open Standards, hurting innovation, competition and user freedom
in Europe. FSFE has updated
its analysis
page, comparing the current draft with previous versions, as
well as demands from a proprietary lobby group. Ahead of
Document Freedom Day on
March 31, FSFE is in conversation with EC and Member State
decision makers to make them aware of the problem.

Berlin/Vienna March 24. The Free Software Foundation Europe
awarded Deutschlandradio and Radio Orange with the Document Freedom Day 2010 Prize
for using Open Standards and promoting them in society. FSFE's German
team together with the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure
(FFII) will present the DFD cake displaying "rOGG on!" in Berlin
and Cologne to Deutschlandradio. The Austrian DFD cake goes to the
Vienna-based station Radio Orange 94.0.

FSFE's Fellows have elected their second
representative to the organisation's governing body, the
General Assembly. Julia Klein will join Torsten Grote in FSFE's
strategic decision making body to speak for the Fellows for the next
two years.

Will you be able to read your documents 20 years from now? Every day,
millions of computer users like you edit text and spreadsheets, take
pictures and record audio and video. What if you couldn't read your
private letters anymore, or even open that album with pictures from your
honeymoon? What if you couldn't exchange those files with friends, because
the software used by each one of you can't talk to each other? To help you
make your documents future-proof, we celebrate Document Freedom Day on
March 31.

FSFE welcomes the arrival of greater competition in the web browser
market. From today, Microsoft has to offer Windows users in Europe the
possibility to choose among different browsers. This step puts into
practice the company's settlement with the European Commission from
December 2009. The Free Software Foundation Europe was an active
participant in the Commission's investigation.

This year on Valentine's Day, FSFE calls on Free Software users
everywhere to show their love for Free Software. Behind every Free
Software initiative and organisation there are real, hard-working
people.

During the whole of February 2010, FSFE's Fellows will be
able to elect their second representative in FSFE's General Assembly. The
winner of the election will help FSFE's strategic decision making body plan the
future of the organisation, and will join Torsten Grote who occupies
the first Fellowship seat since
earlier last year. Both Fellowship representatives are full members of the General Assembly for a term of
two years, and have all the rights and obligations of other members.

The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE)
receives this year's Theodor Heuss Medal for its extraordinary
work for equitable participation in the information society. Since
2001 FSFE has been committed to the freedom to use, investigate,
modify and redistribute software in all parts of society and
politics. Theodor Heuss Foundation states: "FSFE as a forward
thinking organisation contributes to the development and
establishment of rules for good global governance."

Simon Josefsson is a Fellow and GNU hacker with a special interest
in security. His contributions to the Free Software world include
such ubiquitous projects as GnuTLS and libssh2, and he was recently
presented with the Nordic Free Software Award. Stian Rødven Eide
interviewed Simon as a part of our regular Fellowship interviews,
asking him about his projects and other security matters.

Free Software Foundation Europe congratulates the European Commission
on pushing Microsoft to give users greater choice between different
browsers. "The selection screen will make users aware that they can
make their own choices," says Karsten Gerloff, FSFE's President. "We
are glad that FSFE has helped the Commission to put limits to
Microsoft's desktop monopoly."

The European Commission (EC) has given in to the demands of
lobbyists for Microsoft and SAP when it revised a key document on
interoperability between electronic government services. The Free Software
Foundation Europe (FSFE) has analysed the evolution of a new version of the
European Interoperability Framework (EIF), showing that Commission has based its
work on the input of the Business Software Alliance (BSA), a lobby group for
proprietary software vendors, and ignored the voices of a large part of the
European software industry. At the same time, remarks by the EC's Vice President
about Free Software point to a worrying lack of awareness within the
Commission.

For this year's round of fund-raising, the Free Software
Foundation Europe (FSFE) has cooked up something special. The biggest donor
of 2009 will share a cooking session with FSFE's President and other
members of the organisation's executive team. FSFE is looking to raise
100,000 Euro during the last quarter of 2009.

Starting in November 2009, Free Software Foundation
Europe (FSFE) will award three people with a Fellowship grant every month
for the coming year. Everybody who is actively working for Free Software
but cannot afford the Fellowship contribution can apply for the grant.

FSFE has unleashed an advocacy push in order to prevent the
European Commission from hollowing out an important European
reference document on interoperability. A draft for a new version
of the European Interoperability Framework (EIF) leaked to the
press last week.

Leif-Jöran Olsson is a language technologist and XML enthusiast with a long history in the Swedish solidarity movement. I sat down for an interview with Leif-Jöran and asked him about his background, his education and the various projects he’s been involved in.

Oracle should agree to put MySQL in the hands of an independent non-profit
guardian, proposes the Free Software Foundation Europe. The Free Software
community could develop MySQL to its full potential, while Oracle would not
have to worry that a competitor could take over the database project.

A new set of graphics that includes banners, web 2.0 buttons and micro
buttons to advertise donations to FSFE e FSFE's Newsletter is awaiting
for you to be grabbed and spread. Whether you manage a bullettin board, a
weblog or a website feel free to copy and paste our html code into your
site. Show the web that you care about Free Software and FSFE!

Microsoft's latest operating system, Windows 7, is currently
shipping with a potentially serious defect. Ahead of the product's
global launch on Thursday, Germany's federal IT security agency
(BSI) has issued a warning [1] about a high-risk vulnerability in
the SMB2 protocol. This can be exploited over the network to shut
down a computer with a Denial of Service (DoS) attack.

The European Commission yesterday announced a preliminary
agreement with Microsoft. The deal is supposed to settle an
antitrust investigation about the company's dominant position in
the web browser market. The Commission is also ready to strike
a deal on interoperability. The goal is to allow rival products
to work with Microsoft's applications on the desktop.

The European Commission is on the verge of settling two antitrust
cases against Microsoft. The details of this settlement will determine
how much competition there can be in Europe's software market for
years to come.

Andreas Tolf Tolfsen is a web technologist, developer and aspiring musicologist - who works at Opera Software, and regularly fights for digital freedoms. I sat down for a Jabber session with Andreas, asking him about his work, his life and his music.

The issue of Free Software has
hit the run-up to the German elections. During a campaign launched by
Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) politicians from many parties
have recognised the potential of Free Software and Open Standards for Germany.
In response to questions from supporters of FSFE, they explain that Free
Software equals more competition, promotes innovation and provides cost
savings.

With the German federal elections coming up on September 27 2009, FSFE calls on all
friends of freedom to ask the parties' candidates about their positions on Free
Software and Open Standards. We have set up a page about the German
Bundestagswahl to help
you ask questions, and to collect the answers.

Thomas Jensch, FSFE's current intern in the Zurich office, took on the
role of coordinator for FSFE's edu-team. During his internship, one of Thomas' tasks is to
reorganise and revive FSFE's activities related to Free Software in education. He already agreed to continue
coordinating the team after the conclusion of his internship in November.

Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) congratulates the European
Commission on its firm stance in the antitrust investigation against
Microsoft, which has led the company to offer a settlement. For any
such settlement, getting the details right will be crucial for
competition and innovation in the web browser market.

Smári McCarthy is a thoughtful anarchist and practical chaos technician - with a deep interest in Free Software and democracy. Currently serving as project manager for the Icelandic Innovation Center, Smári works on digital fabrication and peer-to-peer education, while spending his spare time breaking the fundamental assumptions of how we organise society. I sat down for an interesting interview with Smári, in which he explained his projects and how they can contribute towards a more sustainable world.

During its General Assembly in Miraflores de la Sierra, Spain, the
members of FSFE elected new coordinators for several of the
organisation's activities, including strategy, legal and executive
coordination.

FSFE's Spanish team is proud to invite all people interested in Free
Software to a team meeting in order to set the group's agenda for next
months. The meeting will take place alongside FSFE's 2009 General
Assembly in Residencia La
Cristalera near
Miraflores
de la Sierra, Madrid. After the meeting there will be a Social
Event with the opportunity to meet and get to know various people from
FSFE's Executive Team
and General Assembly who have come
to Miraflores
de la Sierra, Madrid, for the yearly meeting to discuss and decide
upon FSFE's strategy for the coming
year.

It has been an interesting time since
FSFE added a Fellowship
representation to the General Assembly (GA). Torsten Grote,
Jan-Hendrik Peters, Michel Roche, and Björn Schießle emerged from
the candidacy
period, as the first four
Fellows running for the
election.

FSFE is seeking applicants for coordinator and staff
positions in our legal department, the Freedom Task Force. The FTF coordinator
and staff work in cooperation with a mixed team of volunteers and employees to
support FSFE's mission.

In addition to being the friendly media face of Wikipedia Finland, the team contact for Ubuntu Finland and founder of local advocacy project Vapaa Suomi (Libre Finland), Timo Jyrinki has been involved as an active developer and translator for a wide range of Free Software organisations such as FSFE, Debian, GNOME and Openmoko. He has worked on computer graphics for much of his life, with a particular interest in human-computer interaction, and spends a lot of his current time making improvements to embedded systems. Timo is also the subject of this month's Fellowship interview.

Patents on software provide obstacles to knowledge-based industries by making computers less secure, less reliable and by preventing competition on a basic level. Lack of competition and uncalculable legal risks raise the cost of ICT and cost jobs across the entire industry, for which the enablement through software is a major innovation driver, as highlighted in the UNCTAD Information Economy Report 2007-2008.

In the past months, the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) visibly improved the
technological infrastructure of the Fellowship. We moved the Fellows' blogging
platform to a new site, we created a Planet to aggregate the Fellows' blogs and
we provided them with an improved and functional wiki.

Myriam Schweingruber is a devoted Free Software advocate with a flair for convincing people. Having worked as a translator, a school teacher and a pharmacist, Myriam is quite experienced in the art of communication, and gives a clear impression of trustworthiness. She has been especially active in the Swiss community, and helped found FSFE’s associate organisation, Whilhelm Tux, where she also served as the President. Read on for the latest instalment of our Fellowship interview series - "the smallest unit of freedom".

It will be the responsibility of the Executive Director to coordinate
FSFE's day-to-day affairs through working with a mixed team of
volunteers and employees. Further responsibilities include management
of the organisational assets according to the priorities set by the
General Assembly and coordination of the Executive Council.

The election process for the first Fellowship seat on
FSFE's General Assembly is underway now and four people have put themselves up for election by
all Fellows: Torsten Grote, Jan-Hendrik Peters, Michel Roche, and Björn
Schießle.

A great global community is gathering today to celebrate the second Document Freedom Day. After a successful 2008 celebration, Document Freedom Day teams all over the world are joining efforts to raise awareness for Document Freedom and Open Standards.

Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) today announces that the second European Licensing and Legal Workshop will be held at the Hotel Okura on the 23rd and the 24th of April 2009 in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. This conference will provide a forum for discussions on supply chain management, compliance procedures, licence management, community interaction, and other legal issues related to the growth of the European Free Software market.

For eight years now, the Free Software Foundation Europe has been
working tirelessly for basic rights and freedoms in an increasingly
software-driven society. The 11th of March 2009 sees another major
milestone passed, with its 2^3 (eighth) birthday being celebrated by
its friends, Fellows and associates.

Free Software Foundation Europe today announces that it
will support the European Commission's antitrust investigation against
Microsoft and to this effect it has formally requested to be admitted as an
interested third party.

Colin Turner is a dedicated Free Software activist and Fellowship member, working as a scientist and teacher at the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland. He has been advocating Free Software in schools and universities for many years and generously shared some of his experiences with us in this fourth instalment of our Fellowship interview series - "the smallest unit of freedom".

The Fellowship
of the Free Software Foundation Europe is proud to announce its latest
initiative: pdfreaders.org, a site
providing information about PDF with links to Free Software PDF readers
for all major operating systems.

Enrico Zini is a long time Fellow of the FSFE and a prominent Debian
developer. He has been involved in many different projects relating
to Free Software and is deeply concerned about social issues. Read on
for the fourth in our Fellowship interview series - "the smallest unit
of freedom".

Free Software Foundation Europe welcomes the European Commission's
decision and offers its support in the coming anti-trust
investigation. As stated previously in a letter to the European
Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes, anti-competitive behaviour is
unacceptable, whether it occurs as 'tying' products with dominant
market segments, or in circumventing standards and fair access.

Results of the translation sprint

11 January 2009

FSFE's new year translation sprint ended yesterday with a respectable
result: the numerous volunteers created 49 new translations and updated
137 documents within 28 days.

FSFE's core team expresses its appreciation towards all the volunteers
who contributed. You have helped a great deal by making information
about Free Software and FSFE's activities available in local European
languages.

Back at work? Still looking for a good New Year's Resolution?
2009 will be an important year for FSFE, not the least because the
General Assembly will see the first Fellow elected into its midst by
general election among all active Fellows of FSFE. The Fellowship will
also continue to play a direct role in FSFE's activities.

This month features the third installment of our Fellowship interviews
series. Hanno Böck is a Fellowship member who concerns himself with a
wide range of issues, from privacy and media activism to GNU/Linux and
the environment. Stian Rødven Eide sat down for an interview session with
Hanno, asking him about his work and how it all relates to Free Software.

This month we interviewed Johannes Böck about CAcert, Gentoo,
OpenStreetMap, privacy, security, and Free Software
businesses. This is the third in our series of Fellowship
interviews - "the smallest unit of freedom".

The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) announces a translation sprint
for their web pages from 15 December 2008 to 11 January 2009. The aim of
this sprint is to provide information about Free Software and FSFE's work
in as many languages as possible.

FSFE's Freedom Task Force (FTF) and GPL-Violations.org today released a guide to reporting and fixing licence compliance issues. This guide will help users and developers to deal with license violation reports. It explains how to make a report, what information is useful to include, and offers suggestions for how projects or businesses can deal with reports once they are received.

Following up on the "IPR in ICT Standardisation" Workshop two weeks ago
in Brussels, FSFE president Georg Greve analysed the conflicts between
patents and standards. The resulting paper is about the most harmful
effects of patents on standards, the effectiveness of current remedies,
and potential future remedies.

This month Ciarán O'Riordan interviewed Rolf Camps about translating,
volunteering, and awareness of Free Software in Belgium. Translations
are utterly crucial for a European organisation, and it's a lot of work
that doesn't get much visible credit, so Ciarán wanted to ask Rolf
about motivations and what's involved. This is the second in our series
of Fellowship interviews - "the smallest unit of freedom".

The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) supports Free Software so that every citizen can play an independent, active and responsible part in our information society. However, censorship of content, violations of the principle of 'Net Neutrality' and increasing online surveillance do not fit with these goals. FSFE is therefore appealing for participation in the world-wide day of action "Freedom Not Fear", which takes place this Saturday, the 11th October.

Today marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the initial announcement of the
GNU Project, a pioneering initiative to develop an operating system that gives
all users the freedom to modify it and publish modified versions, individually
or working together. The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) commends the
substantial achievements of GNU's first quarter-century and looks forward to
furthering their shared goal of facilitating software freedoms.

To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the GNU project FSFE will be
offering a 25% discount on merchandise from the 23th September until
the 17th October. Please note that this discount does not apply to
shipping costs.

A folder with general information about FSFE and Free Software, and some
leaflets with specific information about FSFE's projects and activities
are now available online in HTML and PDF format. Everybody can download,
print, distribute!

"We see the adoption of the FLA by KDE as a positive and important milestone in the maturity of the Free Software community," says Georg Greve, president of Free Software Foundation Europe. "The FLA was designed to help projects increase the legal maintainability of their software to ensure long-term protection and reliability. KDE is among the most important Free Software initiatives and it is playing a central role in bringing freedom to the desktop. This decision of the KDE project underlines its dedication to think about how to make that freedom last."

"Of course, it should be in the users interest to 'ride their bicycles independently', i.e. not having to rely on training wheels. However, the training wheels keep children from falling and give freedom to both the children and their parents. Likewise Wine helped to give freedom and security to the users. It is for this we are thankful and we recognise their work."

"It is a clear, legal fact that distributing Free Software means
people must comply with the licences. GPL-Violations.org and the FTF
are now building the long-term legal infrastructure for support and
compliance" comments Harald Welte. Shane Coughlan adds "I believe our
new agreement will help ensure sustainability for legal infrastructure
to support Free Software in Europe."

"Technologically speaking, the state of IS29500 is depressing," says
Marko Milenovic of FSFE's Serbian Team and co-chair of the Serbian
technical committee on DIS29500. "In large parts it is low quality
technical prose that fails to use the normative terminology mandated by
ISO/IEC's guidelines. We've been told to wait for the maintenance
process for MS-OOXML to become usable. That ISO would knowingly approve
a dysfunctional specification is disillusioning."

Today is Document Freedom Day: Roughly 200 teams from more than 60
countries worldwide are organising local activities to raise awareness
for Document Freedom and Open Standards. [...] Document Freedom
is about giving you control of your information, it is about giving
governments control of their public records, and it is about freedom
of choice. You can give yourself that freedom today [...]

At a time when the EU Commission investigates the anti-competitive
behaviour of a market-dominant player, the European Parliament (EP)
still imposes that same specific software choice on both the European
Union's citizens and its own MEPs. OpenForum Europe, The European
Software Market Association, and the Free Software Foundation Europe
today launched a petition to call on the EP to use Open Standards so
that all citizens can participate in the democratic process.

"The Freedom Task Force is working to foster effective legal
infrastructure for Free Software in Europe. A great deal of our work is
based on engaging directly with people and Google's contribution will
allow us to do this more effectively," says Shane Coughlan, FTF
Coordinator.

The European Commission has fined Microsoft 899 million Euro for
anti-competitive behaviour by restricting access to interoperability
information. "Microsoft is the last company that actively promotes the use of
software patents to restrict interoperability. This kind of behaviour
has no place in an Internet society where all components should connect
seamlessly regardless of their origin," says Georg Greve, president of
the Free Software Foundation Europe.

Yesterday's media briefing by Microsoft on its its pledge to release
interoperability information for flagship products contained little
actual news. Over the years Microsoft has made multiple similar pledges
and they at times proved to be detrimental rather than beneficial for
interoperability. Examining the terms of the Microsoft's latest action
shows no major change of policy.

The Document Freedom Day (DFD) is a global day for Document Liberation
with grassroots action for promotion of Free Document Formats and Open
Standards in general. The DFD was initiated and is supported by a
group of organisations and companies, including, but not limited to,
the Free Software Foundation Europe, ODF Alliance, OpenForum Europe,
IBM, Red Hat and Sun Microsystems, Inc. On 26 March 2008, the Document
Freedom Day will provide a global rallying point for Document
Liberation and Open Standards.

When ECMA submitted MS-OOXML as ECMA-376 to ISO for fast-track
approval, several countries criticised overlap with the existing ISO
standard ISO/IEC 26300:2006, the Open Document Format (ODF). [...]
Considering that alleged preservation of idiosyncrasies is the stated
reason for the entire DIS-29500 ISO process, FSFE considers it
worthwhile to investigate this claim in greater depth.

FSFE's Freedom Task Force today announces the first European Licensing and
Legal Workshop for Free Software will be held on Friday the 11th of April
in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. The venue for this meeting is the
InterContinental Amstel Hotel.

FSFE's Freedom Task Force was launched in November 2006 to help support
individuals, projects and businesses with Free Software licensing. The
initial phase of the FTF was possible thanks to support by the
Netherlands based philantropic organisation NLnet foundation. NLnet's
support allowed the FTF to provide training, consultancy and to work in
partnership with gpl-violations.org to resolve licence issues in the
European area. The FTF also formed networks of technical and legal
experts to foster cooperation between lawyers, projects and businesses
with licensing concerns. Now, after just over twelve months of
continual growth, NLnet is providing a second round of financial support
to this innovative legal project.

"Microsoft should be required openly, fully and faithfully to
implement free and open industry standards," is the message of a
letter by the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) to European
Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes. To help achieve this goal, FSFE
offered its support for a possible antitrust investigation based on
the complaint of Opera Software against Microsoft. The complaint was
based on anti-competitive behaviour in the web browser market.

One case is over and interoperability won. The European Court made
clear that interoperability information should not be kept secret and
the agreement shows that Microsoft saw no way to continue its
obstruction of interoperability in this area. This establishes a
standard which everyone will have to meet from now on.

"Vendor lock-in has become the primary problem for IT decisions in
general and Free Software adoption in particular. It distorts the market
and denies Free Software solutions equal competition on the merits. The
problem has been that many lock-ins are invisible, for example reliance
on proprietary protocols or needing to use certain document
formats. Certified Open makes that lock-in visible and allows users to
measure their dependency."

"Microsoft can consider itself above the law no longer," says Georg
Greve, president of the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE).
"Through tactics that successfully derailed antitrust processes in
other parts of the world, including the United States, Microsoft has
managed to postpone this day for almost a decade. But thanks to the
perseverance and excellent work of the European Commission, these
tactics have now failed in Europe."

The terms of the GNU GPL licence have been confirmed as binding
once again, with a German court ruling that Skype was failing
to uphold its obligations as a distributor. FSFE wants to help
other vendors understand their GNU GPL obligations.

FSFE Guest Commentary on Heise.de: "Conversion between Microsoft's
Office OpenXML (MS-OOXML) and the vendor-independent Open Document
Format (ODF) has been proposed by Microsoft and its associates as a
solution to the problems caused by Microsoft's efforts to push a
format into the market that conflicts with the existing Open
Standard. [...] If these converters were actually able to do what they
promise to do, they would be unnecessary."

Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) has always helped the community
through providing pro bono advice, and through this has discovered
that businesses often require additional personal assistance. For
this reason, FSFE is offering businesses a chance to get individual
consultancy regarding Free Software issues at its Zurich, Switzerland
office.

Featured article by Georg Greve and Joachim Jakobs
about the need for Open Standards in archival, and why using MS-OOXML risks future data loss:
"Digital information could potentially be stored without loss of quality for a very long time to come.
But without knowledge about the encoding, our documents will become a meaningless series of ones and zeroes to future generations, just like cave paintings are too often meaningless bits of colour on stone to us."

Version 3 of the GNU GPL has been released, after eighteen months of
public consultation and discussion. Version 3 provides better
internationalisation, more protection against software patents, and
does a better job of ensuring that Free Software users can install
modified software on their computers.

The following six questions relate to the application of the
ECMA/MS-OOXML format to be accepted as an IEC/ISO
standard. Unless a national standardisation body has conclusive
answers to all of them, it should vote no in IEC/ISO and request
that Microsoft incorporate its work on MS-OOXML into ISO/IEC
26300:2006 (Open Document Format).

The FSFE criticises the proposed "second Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement
Directive" (IPRED2) for sweeping criminalisation across various areas of law
and loosely described areas of activity, including for 'attempting, aiding or
abetting and inciting.' The proposed text criminalises these acts for
infringement of many dissimilar laws including copyright, trademark, and
patents.

The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is committed to working
with lawyers throughout Europe to maximise the legal security of Free
Software and is aware that as the community matures it is important to
be able to locate professional legal advice. For this reason FSFE has
introduced a new policy for recommending legal experts in individual
countries.

"The Free Software community is built on the principle of cooperation
of many very different parts. The Free Software Foundation Europe
(FSFE) works exclusively for the benefit of the entire community,
including the companies that make use of Free Software," explains
Georg Greve, president of FSFE. "We do this work gladly and with
great enthusiasm and we always remember that to a large extent this
work is made possible by those who work with us and support us, in
particular the many Fellows of FSFE."

Today FSFE has released the Fiduciary Licence Agreement (FLA) under the
terms of the GNU Free Documentation Licence (GFDL) and the Creative
Commons Attribution/Share-alike (CC by-sa) licence. The FLA is a
copyright assignment that allows Free Software projects to bundle their
copyright in a single organisation or person. It enables projects to
ensure their legal maintainability and can be used to either assign
copyright to FSFE's Fiduciary Program or to assign the rights to
another organisation set up by the project team itself.

FSFE considers this a unique opportunity: With the release of Vista,
users will need to upgrade to a new operating system that will feel
different and require some time to get used to its functionality. The
same is true for any modern GNU/Linux distribution. It is about the
same investment in effort, but it will give you control over your own
data.

The OpenSwarm Project will be protected by FSFE's Freedom Task Force
(FTF). Shane Coughlan, FTF Coordinator, explains "The Freedom Task
Force is here to help strengthen the legal foundation of the Free
Software eco-system. The Fiduciary licence Agreement is part of this.
It provides a clear way for projects to consolidate their copyright.
In the case of OpenSwarm, FSFE is acting a legal guardian for the
project and ensuring that the developers can focus on maturing an
exciting development platform."

In this talk, Richard Stallman explains why Free Software is
defined the way it is, the technical and political choices that
have gotten the Free Software movement to where it is today, and
what we have to do to prepare for what's ahead. With more than
20 years of practice, Stallman also entertains while telling the
story. This transription work was undertaken by FSFE due
to the very positive feedback from the transcripts about GPLv3.

Kern Sibbald, the founder and lead developer of the Bacula network
backup solution, assigned his copyright to FSFE. "I wanted to
underline the commitment of the Bacula Project to Free Software," said
Kern. "Bacula has always been a community project and we're just
solidifying that for the long-term. I am very thankful that the FSFE
is providing this service because it removes an important administrative
burden from the project, which allows us to focus on the task of
programming."

"We have as a primary goal to help corporations to adhere to the
licences from the onset, rather than to have to enforce violations
later," explains Mr. Coughlan. "We encourage those responsible for
compliance for their company to contact us, so we can work together to
avoid licence compliance problems, rather than having to later solve
problems that could have been avoided in the first place."

Early this morning, a group of contributing organisations and authors
launched DRM.info, a collaborative information platform about the
potential dangers of Digital Restriction Management (DRM) initiated by
the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE). The contributing groups come
from different areas, such as digital freedom, network activism, consumer
rights and libraries.

After six months of public comment, the second public discussion draft of
GPLv3 is now online - responding to public input about patents, Digital
Restrictions Management, and global enforceability among other things.

European Commission to fine Microsoft 1.5 million Euro per day
retroactively from 16. December 2005, totalling 280.5 million Euro.
Should Microsoft not come into compliance until the end of July 2006,
the daily fines could be doubled. These fines are a reaction to
Microsofts continued lack of compliance with the European Commission
decision to make interoperability information available to competitors
as a necessary precondition to allow fair competition. FSFE has
supported the European Commission from the start of the suit in 2001.

Marking the half-way point of the year-long public consultation process for
redrafting Free Software's cornerstone licence, the third international GPLv3
conference will host experts from Europe and from around the world.
The venue, in the heart of the city, is the Centre de Cultura Contemporània
de Barcelona (CCCB). There, during the two days of this event, there will
be presentations from experts including Richard Stallman, president of FSF,
Eben Moglen, chairman of Software Freedom Law Center, Georg Greve, president
of FSF Europe and Harald Welte, founder of gpl-violations.org.

The conference will take place in Barcelona,
Spain, and the exact venue will be announced soon. In January, a
year-long public consultation process for updating the GNU
General Public License was launched. Commonly called "the GPL",
this licence is used by the majority of Free Software to detail
the distribution terms of the software.

The KDE e.V. - a registered non-profit organisation that represents
the K Desktop Environment (KDE®) in legal and financial matters - and
the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) are proud to announce their
associate status, working together for the promotion and protection of
Free Software on users' desktops in Europe and worldwide.

"Businesses and public authorities have to pay prices that are kept high
by Microsoft's refusal to share interoperability information with its
competitors, as is common practice in the industry," explains Andrew
Tridgell, president and founder of the Samba Team in his presentation on
behalf of Free Software Foundation Europe in European Court today.

Carlo Piana, Free Software Foundation Europe's lawyer on the case
explains: "The interventions made perfectly clear that the Blue Bubble
only existed in the lawyers' pleadings. Meanwhile, Microsoft left no
doubt as to the legal nature of that Bubble: a conglomerate of 46
patents that it claims it holds on ADS, whose main effect is to
prevent interoperability and, eventually, competition."

"Microsoft's software locks in users and now the company is lobbying to get this lock-in effect legalised by software patents" is the basic message of a feature article Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) has published on its
website today.

FSFE's way to say thank you for the support: Like last year's PDA,
donated by xtops.de the Free Software Foundation Europe will be
raffling off two HP notebooks to all active Fellows on 1 April this
year. For two lucky Fellows, April Fool's Day will be anything but
foolish.

"After several years of investigation, the original ruling in 2004, and
a European Court case lasting close to two years, we now have to conclude
that Microsoft never had any intention to comply with the antitrust
ruling," comments Georg Greve, president of the Free Software
Foundation Europe (FSFE). "We were forced to witness years of delays,
stalling and playing for more time during which Microsoft has made no
attempt to allow interoperability and competition with its
competitors, including Free Software such as Samba."

The Free Knowledge Foundation / Fundación Conocimiento Libre (FKF) and
Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) are proud to announce their new
official associate status, working together for the promotion and
protection of Free Software in Spain.

The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) filed an application for
leave to intervene in the antitrust suit against Microsoft today. Georg
Greve, President of FSFE said: "The more Microsoft is able to purchase
its opponents' solidarity, the more important FSFE's commitment to
freedom and interoperability is."
These days, FSFE meets adversaries of freedom in various venues: In
Brussels, the 'Intellectual Property Rights European Enforcement
Directive' (IPRED2) is being pushed by the rights-holding industry, and
Microsoft has shown that it was able to rewrite the Vienna Conclusions
on ICT and Creativity for the UN World Summit on Information Society (WSIS).

"Microsoft finally seems to have made a step forward on their long
march towards giving their users freedom: [...] Given previous
Microsoft statements about the Copyleft approach and in particular the
GNU GPL as 'viral', 'cancerous' and 'communist', seeing Microsoft now
publish licenses applying the very same principles seems quite an
evolution."

"We congratulate Microsoft on effective use of their considerable
financial resources: First they manage to pay off Sun, then Novell and
the CCIA. Now they convinced Real Networks to serve their own head on
a silver platter for just US $761 Million"

Not continuing what was begun, or changing from a horse to a mule
midstream, as the honored Indian delegate so eloquently put it, would
be wasting the time and effort spent on this initiative by all sides,
North and South. For this reason we strongly support the notion of
letting the IIM process finish what it began.

Stichting NLnet donate 150,000 EUR to support GPLv3 activities
The project will bring together thousands of organisations, software
developers, and software users from around the globe during 2006, in
an effort to update the world's most popular Free Software licence. The
GPLv3 promises to be one of the largest participatory comments and
adoption efforts ever undertaken.

After years of struggle, the European Parliament finally rejected the
software patent directive with 648 of 680 votes: A strong signal
against patents on software logic, a sign of lost faith in the
European Union and a clear request for the European Patent Office
(EPO) to change its policy: the EPO must stop issuing software patents
today.

Members of the European Parliament have been given a copy of the
Karlsruhe Memorandum against Software Patents 2005. Issued by Free
Software Foundation Europe, this memorandum collected more than 200
signatures at this year's GNU/LinuxTag conference in Karlsruhe. Citing scientific evidence, the text argues that software patents in Europe will hurt jobs and innovation. Among the supporters are leaders of some of Europe's biggest trade union groups.

Giovanni Angoli is the lucky winner of the Sharp SL-C1000 raffled at
GNU/LinuxTag 2005 in Karlsruhe, Germany. FSFE congratulates Giovanni
and thanks Werner Heuser of Xtops.DE who sponsored the PDA for Fellowship
of FSFE!

Xtops.DE has sponsored a handheld computer which will be raffled on June
25 at 14:00 CEST. The winner will be chosen at random from all FSFE
Fellows whose contribution has been received before that date.

"Microsoft abuses the good will of Ms. Kroes" - "European Commission
is about to enter legal house-to-house fighting!". Comment of the FSFE
on the latest Microsoft proposal. "The European Court decided in
December 2004 that Microsoft is to publish this information
immediately. This proposal, if accepted, will effectively revert the
court decision for the most serious competitor of Microsoft in this
market."

Open letter to Mr Borrell Fontelles, President of the European Parliament.
On July 6th, European Parliament will have to decide on the "Software
Patents" directive. By relying on undefined terms and ineffective
limits, the text that the Council has handed to the Parliament would
allow patents on software standards, business methods, and website
development.

"The FSFE is a great place to work, and I've enjoyed almost every
single day. In few other companies or organisations would I have had
the chance to do useful work and learn in an international context like
I did here. Take this chance, if you can."

On 7th May 2005, the general assembly of FSFE met in Vienna, Austria to
review the activities of the past year and plan ahead for the next year
to come. As this was the end of the second electorial period for
FSFE's extended executive committee, the executive committee presented
another two-year executive summary.

Open letter to Mr McCreevy, European Commissioner for Internal Market and Services.
"The European Commission is currently involved in a historic antitrust
suit with Microsoft. [...] Unfortunately, that unique success is now in
danger of becoming a meaningless victory."

After some months of discussions including FSFE president Georg Greve,
a team of Free Software advocates in Latin America published their declaration
of intent to join the global network of Free Software Foundations.

Statement at Inter-Sessional, Inter-Governmental Meeting (IIM), 11-13
April 2005: "We explicitly support the Friends of Development in their
statement
that no tool should ever be promoted for its own sake and should
therefore be beyond review. [...] Essential building blocks of human
creativity, such as access to knowledge and freedom to participate in
society and economy should once again become the norm, not the
exception. [...]"

Open Letter to staunchly pro-software patent European Information & Communications Technology Industry
Association: "We would like to inform you how
software patents pose a threat to the International Financial Reporting Standards
(IFRS), as all the ideas used in these standards will be implemented
in software and would therefore be patentable."

The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) and the Samba Team have
presented terms explaining how Microsoft could be brought into
compliance with the decision of the European Court of First Instance
of December 2004.

Pushed by the FSFE, the EU antitrust case against Microsoft is gathering momentum again. "We will help the Commission to bring Microsoft to its feet and move towards re-establishing competition", Georg Greve, FSFE's president.

Letter to Catherine Parmentier, Chief Executive Officer of EUROCITIES:
"With the introduction of software patents, European cities would have
to be aware of dramatically increasing costs and an increasingly
difficult legal situation with high risks for the administration."

"We stand up to protect our freedom to shape and participate in a
digital society that respects liberty and privacy." With this slogan,
the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) started its fellowship
program at the FOSDEM fair for Free Software last weekend in Brussels.

On 1st February 2005, the United Nations Working Group on
Internet Governance (WGIG) published a set of 20 issue papers
concerning "Internet Governance." Together with its associate
organisation La Fundación Vía Libre, the Free Software
Foundation Europe managed to comment on the paper on "Cyber
security, cybercrime", which, among other things, asked to
outlaw the art of finding elegant solutions to non-obvious
problems ("hacking") and the paper on "Intellectual Property
Rights", which for instance asked to "balance human rights
with the interests of rights-holders."

The column TUX&GNU@school 8th edition is now available. In this edition,
Mario Fux presents GAMGI, Skolelinux and the KDE Edutainment project.
In future, the column will be published in five languages (German,
English, French, Swedish and Spanish).

Once Basel II becomes widely used, a dramatic increase in software
patent infringement lawsuits for this area is likely to occur on a
global basis. Any bank or any of its customers for Basel II based
software may become target of such legal action -- the risk is
incalculable and can bring about multi-billion Euro lawsuits.

Bo Versterdorf, President of the European Court, has today rejected
Microsoft's appeal to delay execution of the sanctions.
"Those who value freedom and competition have received two nice
christmas gifts this week. First, new EU member Poland does not allow
the introduction of innovation- and job-killer software patents
through the diplomatic back-door. And now the European Court decides
that Microsoft should not get another four years to further harm its
competitors" says Georg Greve, President of the FSFE.

The Free Software Foundation Europe believes that freedom is
priceless and works hard for freedom in the digital society.
Being a non-profit organisation, much work is done by
volunteers, but not everything can be done that way. Working
for something as priceless as freedom does have a cost. That
is why we would like you to support our work.

The European Union is on the way to introduce a legal basis for software
patents in Europe. While you may consider this a topic outside your
daily business, it is likely to become the cause of serious security
problems to European power supplies.

In the scope of the FSFE WIPO project team, the FSFE will work
with other players to change WIPO from an organisation that is solely
oriented towards monopolisation of knowledge to one that is aimed at
increasing the intellectual wealth of all of humankind through a more
flexible, sustainable and effective tool set.

"Those who wish to see freedom of market restored should be aware that
never can someone with deeper pockets divert support already given to
FSFE, as it happened with the CCIA. This independence is priceless,
but not without cost. The only thing that might therefore be able to
stop us is lack of resources because of lack of support."

As Free Software becomes even more important in South Tyrol, the
GNU/Linux User Group Bozen/Bolzano/Bulsan has developed the traditional
Linux Day into the three day South Tyrolean Free Software Conference.

Microsoft has steadily been soliciting supporters of the European
Commission antitrust case to withdraw their support for the Commission
by offering a series of financial settlements. The agreement with Sun
Microsystems to withdraw has now been joined by financial settlements
with Novell and the CCIA, in which they also agreed to withdraw from the
case.

The preceding European Commission (EC) was campaigning actively for the
introduction of software patents in Europe. This campaign was against
the information and evidence showing that this would lead to
considerable risk to the European economies.

Common declaration: "We are convinced that new answers sometimes
require new questions, not more careful repetition of old questions.
[...] We need a World Intellectual Wealth Organisation, dedicated to
the research and promotion of novel and imaginative ways to encourage
the production and dissemination of knowledge." To view the list of
signatories, please follow the link.

Have you ever considered offering general insurance for stock brokers
against the risk of losing money? As absurd as this sounds, the
European Commission is seriously considering equivalent measures at
the moment.

Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) casts doubts on the increasing
rumors that Microsoft is willing to settle the antitrust case against
the EU Commission, which is due to come to Court later this week.

Anniversary of the decision of the European Parliament about software
patents

24 September 2004

The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) commemorates the
anniversary of the software patents decision by the
European Parliament on 24th September. "The parliament
voted for a restrictive way to grant software patents in
Europe. That decision was wise as it accounted for the
numerous recommendations of scientists throughout the
world. For this reason, we would like to encourage the
parliament to maintain an attitude to this matter that is
consistent with its previous decision - to withstand the
pressure by certain lobbying parties." the President of
FSFE Georg Greve emphasises.

Having been plagued by permanent problems with viruses, worms and
other bugs, software-giant Microsoft seems to be developing a multiple
personality. "Microsoft's customers should wonder about the sanity of
their business partner", remarks Joachim Jakobs, Press Speaker for the
Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE).

FSFE mourns death of Ralf Niemand

15 September 2004

Free Software activist Ralf Niemand, member of the Wilhelmshaven
GNU/Linux User Group, contributor to the SkoleLinux project and
volunteer of the Free Software Foundation Europe died of terminal
illness on September 14th 2004. His death was much too early and came
as a shock to all who have known him. He will be missed.

Europe should conserve a competitive advantage and prohibit a legal basis
for software patents: "During the dutch Presidency of the European Union
you have the best opportunity to initiate this revision."

Due to substantial bank fees charged for international money
transfers, small donations or standing orders are too expensive
to be send directly to the Free Software Foundation Europe bank
account. To rectify this, FSFE in july 2004 entered into an
agreement with UK based associate organisation AFFS to collect
donations and transfer them in larger batches.
FSFE welcomes donations through the simple interface at (only bank cards from UK are accepted):

In reaction to the decision by the City of Munich to re-evaluate its
migration plans to Free Software, the Free Software Foundation Europe
points out that software patents are equally a significant problem for
both Free Software and proprietary software alike.

Software patents will destroy the foundations of IBM's future:
"So while IBM is transforming in reaction to the arms race, upon its
sudden end, IBM will find itself having become a grotesquely deformed
giant with a suddenly useless weapon where all its energies go into
sustaining that deformation."

FSFE to challenge Microsoft in its appeal against European Commission:
Among general interests of Free Software, the FSFE will specifically
be representing the interests of the SAMBA team, a Free Software
cooperation developing the only remaining competing implementation of
the SMB/CIFS protocols that permit interoperability between various
operating systems and the MS Windows family.

RSS feeds of news and event announcements available

26 July 2004

Our web team has created automatic RSS feeds for news and upcoming
events. Feeds are focus and language dependent.
The URL for the news feed is
http://www.focus.fsfeurope.org/news/news.language.rss,
while you find the event feed at
http://www.focus.fsfeurope.org/events/events.language.rss.
For example, for German speaking news and the German focus, you would
choose http://www.germany.fsfeurope.org/news/news.de.rss.
For your convenience, the news and event pages contain links to the RSS
feed URLs.

"Research should be able to earn its money also on the market!" - say
politicians - so we, the Free Software Foundation Europe, understand
when researchers use creative ways to get a better income. But even
researchers should take care not to bite the hand that feeds them. This
danger is real, especially with the actual software patent discussion.

The projects of the FSFE are multifaceted: participation in the
German government's delegation at the "World Summit on the
Information Society (WSIS)", consulting with the European Union
during the establishment of the framework programmes,
participation in AGNULA, a project to build a fully Free
Software distribution for professional musicians and multimedia
authors and also the maintenance and advancement of the GNU
General Public License (GPL). This diversity costs a lot of
money: travels round the world, production of information and
marketing material, personnel cost.

With the growing attention the FSF Europe attracts in many countries, the
need has arised to build up a flexible, responsive, and well coordinated
translator team.
Translating and proofreading texts is a precious contribution to the work
of the FSF Europe and an excellent chance to spontaneously take part in
the activities of the FSF Europe without long-term obligations.

"Creating artistic licence by Free Software technology" might have
been the motto of AGNULA (A GNU/Linux Audio distribution -
www.agnula.info): within the scope of the EU project two GNU/Linux
distributions for Debian and Red Hat were developed that are targeted
specifically at professional musicians and multimedia authors.

"Europe is about to finally give up on the goal of its heads of states
and governments to become the 'most competitive knowledge-based
region' until 2010 and has repeatedly failed democratically. It is
unfortunate that the optimism and trust placed in the German
government was somewhat premature. Yesterday was not a good day for
Europe and Germany!"

The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) "welcomes the commitment
of the Federal Government of Germany to freedom from software patents
as being of extreme importance for innovation in Europe", Georg
Greve, president of FSFE, comments in a press release.

What happens in government, society and economy as a whole if these developments are not stopped? We bar people from being creative. We put societal development into the hands of bureaucrats bullying us for their own benefit at every turn. To use the words of the Czech President Vaclav Klaus "The EU is not about freedom and openness, but about bureaucratisation, regulation and harmonisation". If we leave this discussion to others, we may prove him right.

Today the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) complied with the
explicit request to please remove the "Association for Promotion and
Research in Libre Computing" (APRIL) from the list of associate
organisations. The request was made by APRIL president and FSFE
member Frederic Couchet along with his resignation from FSFE.

The Free Software Foundation Europe and the Foundation for a Free
Informational Infrastructure endorse an action week from May 10th
to 14th to inform citizens, economy and politics about the harmful
consequences of this initiative. In the course of this action week
demonstrations and panel discussions in many European cities will
take place. To inform you ex ante we have enclosed the joint
position of FSFE and FFII concerning software patents (see below).

After years of successful cooperation through their membership in the
"Verein zur Förderung Freier Software" (FFS), Austria's associate
organisation of the FSF Europe, Georg Jakob, Karin Kosina and Reinhard
Müller have now officially joined the ranks of the FSFE.

The FSFs have no doubt that the litigation between SCO against IBM and
Novell cannot affect the users of the GNU/Linux operating system.
Professor Eben Moglen of Columbia University, pro-bono general counsel
of FSF North America, has published a paper that will help Free
Software developers and end-users understand the legal issues and
business risks involved in using the Linux kernel.

Article by Georg Greve:
"The system and ideology of 'intellectual property' has evolved
exclusively to cater to the needs of large Northern media
corporations. Northern societies, and in particular their artists and
authors, have massive problems with that system themselves.
It is precisely for this system that the digital divide and current power
inequalities are as large as they are."

(Geneva) From December 10th until 12th, 2003 the World
Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) took place in Geneva,
Switzerland, adopting on United Nations level a Declaration of
Principles and Plan of Action towards a global information
society.

(Geneva) During the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS),
the Civil Society Patents, Copyright, Trademarks (PCT) Working Group
is holding a workshop "Free Software, Free Society" with a group of
top speakers, including Richard Stallman and Lawrence Lessig.
The workshop will take place December 10th, 2003 from
17:00-20:00 in the Palexpo building in Geneva, Switzerland.

(Karlsruhe)
From July 15th to 18th, a preparative conference towards the World
Summit on the Information Society will be held in Paris, at which the
future and destination of the information- and science- society shall
be discussed as requested by the UN- General Assembly.
As a nominee from the coordinating circle of the German Civil Society
for the WSIS, Georg Greve, president of the FSF Europe will take part
in the meeting as a member of the German governmental delegation.

The 2003 general assembly of the FSF Europe in Milano, Italy on June
21st 2003 seems like a good opportunity to briefly recap some of the
activities during the first two operational years of the FSF Europe.

Press-release of the Free Software Foundation: "Brussels,
Belgium - Saturday, February 8, 2003 - The Free Software Foundation
(FSF) bestowed today its fifth annual FSF Award for the Advancement of
Free Software. FSF President and founder, Richard Stallman, presented
the award to Professor Lawrence Lessig for promoting understanding of
the political dimension of free software, including the idea that
'code is law'. Lessig has also promoted ideas similar to free
software in other related fields."

Press-release of the FSF Europe: "The Free Software
Foundation Europe is proud to announce the first publicly
available version of its Fiduciary
Licence Agreement (FLA); an agreement that will help securing
the legal stability of Free Software by allowing the FSF Europe to
act as the fiduciary for Free Software authors and projects."

Press-release of the FSF Europe: "The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) invites all companies, organisations and research institutes interested in Free Software projects funded by the European Commission to join their effort."

The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) is now an
official associate organisation of the Free Software Foundation Europe
(FSFE). The FFII is the first associate organisation of the FSF Europe
based in Germany.

On May 26th 2002, the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSF
Europe) finishes its second general assembly, completing the first
year of activities. Members from Sweden, Italy, Germany and France
drew a summary of last years activities, analyzed the current
situation of Free Software and exchanged plans and visions for the
upcoming year.

The FSF Europe and supporting parties has submitted a recommendation for
the 6th European Community Framework Programme:
"Free Software is a concept that has
fundamentally changed the way some parts of the IT
sector are working towards a more stable, lasting and
sustainable approach with higher dynamics and increased
efficiency. It is obvious that the first region to adopt
and support this principle on a larger scale can profit
enormously and get a head-start in the information age."

On Monday 29 April 2002, at 6pm in London, we invite you to
join the European Copyright Directive Alert
miniconference. Organised by the Campaign for Digital Rights
it will explain the dangers of the EUCD. Unless it is stopped before
December 2002, it will become legal in each European
country.

On Friday 26 April 2002, the Free Software Foundation
Europe will be present at the first LiLiT meeting in
Liège, Belgium. During this evening (night ?-) session,
we will focus on the best means to explain the ethical
value of Free Software. A global view of the on going
actions will hopefully allow everyone to figure out how
to promote and defend the Free Software ideals.

Between the 16th and 17th of February, 2002, the Free
and Open Source Software Developers Meeting will take
place in Brussels, Belgium. Among the visitors will be
Richard M. Stallman, president of the Free Software
Foundation and Georg C. F. Greve, president of the Free
Software Foundation Europe. The FSF Europe welcomes all
members of the press who wish to meet the members and
volunteers of the foundation.

"This collaboration is a very important step for the Portuguese and
European free software community. Problems faced by the free software
community in Portugal are similar to those faced in other European
countries; by joining forces with FSFE we can solve this problems more
efficiently" said Jaime Villate, founding member of ANSOL.

"[...] Keep on spreading the word. What we do today will
influence the future of mankind for the next 200 years to come -
we have to make sure that people understand the issues of
Free Software and the importance of freedom. [...]
Freedom counts! "

Jonas Oberg was appointed new Vice President of the FSF
Europe: "The future of Free Software depends a lot on
what we do today. I plan to work to preserve the ability to
use and develop Free Software in all of its forms, for
example by helping to extend the efforts already underway
against software patents and helping the media, government
and companies understand the underlying issues of Free
Software."

Launch of the "We speak about Free
Software" campaign: There are compelling reasons to
think and speak about Free Software and its philosophy. It
is rather common knowledge this applies to society as a
whole, but it has not yet been widely understood that it
benefits companies, as well. Therefore the FSF Europe launches
this campaign on behalf and with support of several Free
Software companies.

FSF Europe receives charitable status in Germany

20 September 2001

FSF Europe e.V. (the central association) receives
confirmation of its charitable status in Germany by the authorities.